In the Spirit
by bravevulnerability
Summary: A series of Christmas themed one shots, each a glimpse into a minimum of ten previously written stories.
1. No More Departures

**A/N:** **I know this is hardly an adequate enough gift to express how much I adore and appreciate all of you who have not only taken the time to read my work this year, but have also shown me such tremendous amounts of support and overwhelming kindness. I do hope these chapters, this handful of stories and the brief little glimpses back into their worlds, can be considered at least a fraction of my gratitude. If a favorite of yours was not chosen this year, I sincerely apologize and hope that there may be at least one story in this compilation that will ease the disappointment. Above all else, I'm just wishing each of you a magical December and the happiest of holidays.**

* * *

 _Chapter 1: No More Departures_

 _After parting ways instead of getting engaged in 5x24, 'Watershed', Castle and Beckett run into each other on Thanksgiving Day while Beckett is visiting from DC. This chapter picks up not long after._

* * *

Christmas is only a few days away and the impending holiday has her missing New York, missing him. She was fine in DC before Thanksgiving, before that fated cab ride with the man she used to love, has fallen in love with all over again. Before she saw Castle for the first time in six months, she could have made this place a home, she could have been close to happy here, she could have made it work.

But now… he has her questioning all of it.

Kate stares at the phone on the opposite side of her bed, where he should be. He's visited what should be considered an obnoxious amount of times in just the last three weeks, spent practically all of December boosting his frequent flyer miles to come see her. She doesn't complain, she can't - she's drunk on the sensation of having him back, the renewed thrill of electricity that surges through her veins every time he touches her, the warmth that floods her blood when his voice is in her ear, whether it's here or on the phone.

She'll have him any way she can, but she often wonders how long they can make spontaneous trips on planes and stolen hours between her increased caseload work.

 _I want us back_ , she told him on the swings just shy of a month ago. But this isn't them, not completely.

She wants morning coffees and late nights in his bed, she wants him by her side while she investigates, building theory and breaking cases with her; she wants him in reach, not miles away.

Kate pushes up onto her elbow in the bed. It's late, an inappropriate hour to contact him, but she snags her phone anyway. She composes a message, hits the send button on impulse, and bites her lip as it informs her the text has been delivered.

Esposito takes only a handful of minutes to text back.

* * *

Last year was the first Christmas he ever spent with her. They agreed to reserve Thanksgiving solely for family then, their months of dating intense but still new, their first (and last) dinner with his mom and her dad still leaving a lasting impression neither of them wished to repeat. But Kate Beckett showing up unexpected on his doorstep on Christmas night made up for everything.

When they broke up, he abandoned the wistful idea of another Christmas together, but now? He yearns for it so badly it aches. He wants her here, helping him decorate, baking cookies with him and Alexis, in his bed on Christmas morning.

All he wants for Christmas is the woman he loves and just got back.

But she's in Washington DC and while he managed to do some decorating in the house she's renting last week while she was at work (her face when she got back that evening was totally worth it), it's not the same.

He'll sacrifice whatever he has to just for the sake of having her back in his life, reclaiming the privilege of loving her after losing her, but while he's grateful, he also hates missing her like this. Phone calls and video chatting are great, long distance is fine, but it'll never replace the sensation of waking up with her in his bed every morning or the knowledge that she's only a cab ride away instead of a plane trip.

He wonders if it's gnawing at her yet, the distance. Every time he shows up on her door in DC, she's dragging him into the house with her smile smudged to his and laughter bubbling between her kisses. Every time he leaves her, the work of her mouth over his is mournful, aching and desperate, always tempting him to cancel his flight. Kate doesn't half-ass anything, she can't enjoy only having one foot in the door, not with him.

But he knows how much she values this job, how much it means to her, and he would never _want_ her to quit, especially not for him.

Rick reaches for his phone on the nightstand. It's nearly one in the morning, but he can't sleep, his mind wracked with thoughts of her and Christmas and words he should probably pour onto a page. But instead, he opens the web browser on his phone, begins typing into the search bar.

 _Apartments for rent in DC_

* * *

"Are you sure you want to do this, Beckett?"

Kate pauses with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, her fingers falling still over her suitcase and her lips pursing.

"I don't know yet," she admits on a sigh, laying her boots along the bottom of her luggage. "I just want to meet with the director, Rachel, discuss the options."

"It's not because of the boyfriend, is it? Because, look, I'm happy for you-"

"No," Kate assures her quickly, folding her coat over her arm. "Castle is important to me, but I wouldn't quit for him and he wouldn't want me to. This is about me."

Agent McCord is silent for a moment. "It's the grey areas, isn't it? You're a cop, you want everything to be black or white, but in this town, with this job…"

"It rarely is," Kate fills in, fingering one of the buttons on her coat as the sinking feeling in her stomach that she's felt on multiple occasions after a case is wrapped up, but loose ends are still left undone, sets in.

"If you can make peace with that, then I hope you decide to stay, because you're an amazing agent, Kate, one of the best I've ever worked with, and you're an excellent partner. I'd hate to lose you, but I won't try to convince you to stay either."

Kate's lips quirk with a smile, gratitude in her chest, but it's not the same. Not the partner she needs.

"Thanks, Rachel. I'll let you know after the holidays. Enjoy your Christmas."

"Hanukkah," she corrects. "And you too."

The call disconnects and Kate lowers the phone to her lap, descends from her haunches to sit on the floor in front of her open suitcase. She has a meeting with the AG director about potentially quitting her job as soon as she gets back, she has a meeting with Gates about potentially returning to the Twelfth as soon as her flight lands. She has no idea what she's going to do yet, all she knows is that she wants to go home for Christmas.

* * *

The key comes in the mail just days before Christmas and his heart trembles with excitement. He ties a red ribbon through the hole, hangs the lonely gold key like an ornament on the Christmas tree. The bridge to their future is subtle amidst the rest of the decorations, perfectly hidden in plain sight for her to find on Christmas morning.

He's booked viewings with multiple real estate agents, plans to allow Kate to have her say in which one they choose, but he asked the agent of just one place - his personal favorite - if he could have the key sent over in advance. The gesture was more symbolic than anything and they agreed to no gifts this year, but he can't wait to see the look on her face when she realizes the meaning behind the house key on their Christmas tree.

He can't wait for her to be here. But it's only Tuesday, five days until Christmas, and she's not flying in until Friday.

* * *

She's scanning the house, ensuring she has everything she needs for a week in New York before she has to rush for the airport. Castle kept her up late on the phone last night, causing her to sleep through her alarm this morning, and if she misses her flight because of him, she'll kill him when she finally does get there.

Kate strides out of the bathroom, positive she has everything, but stops short in front of her bed. Her fingers twitch and she starts for the nightstand without thinking, tugs open the top drawer and plucks the beat up jewelry box from inside.

She cradles the little box in her fingers, most of the velvet rubbed away from six months of Castle's fidgeting fingers scrubbing it raw, and pops the lid open - a ritual she performs more often than she would like to admit. Her fingertips graze over the diamonds sparkling up at her before they close around the band.

She eases the ring from its box, tucking the demolished velvet into her coat pocket, and slips the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand. It's not the first time she's tested the feel of it on her finger either, but this time, she doesn't take it off.

He told her to put the ring on whenever she's ready, when she thinks the time for an engagement feels right, when she knows she wants to marry him.

Kate wiggles her fingers, lets the ring wink back at her, before she pivots on her heel and grabs the handle of her suitcase.

Whether she fully realizes it or not, she walks out the door with her decisions made.

* * *

Her flight is late, holiday traffic out of LaGuardia is horrible, and her meeting with Gates runs over by an hour. By the time she's finally striding down his street with her suitcase rolling behind her, it's almost midnight and his voice is in her ear.

She shakes her head as he whines about flying to see her despite the fact that she's supposed to be here in just a few days. Tickets are an outrageous amount of money and she tells him to save his. Maybe if she was still sitting alone in DC tonight, she might be a bit more tempted, but she's so close, just a few more feet-

Kate winces as the angry screech of tires and car horns blare, loud enough for him to hear.

"Just wait," she says.

 _It'll be worth it._

"What's the point of having money if I can't spend it on what I want?" he complains and she rolls her eyes, dodges a frazzled looking mother pushing a baby stroller.

"Rick, it's nearly midnight," she huffs, but another loud honk of a car on the street next to her muffles the point of her sentence and she shoots the driver a glare.

"Yeah, where are you?" he questions, puzzled and curious. "Ooh, are you going to meet Rachel to investigate another top secret case?"

Her lips quirk. Silly man.

"No, I'm trying to get home," she informs him, sighing out in relief as his building finally comes into view and some of the foot traffic begins to clear.

Home.

"Your street is never that noisy."

Kate smirks. "I know."

It only takes a moment for him to connect the dots and then he's gasping into the phone, the sound of him rushing across the loft, flinging the front door open, filling the line.

Her cheeks ache from the cold and the smile curling across her lips as she hastens her pace through the last few steps to his building, her fingers reaching for the lobby's door-

But Rick beats her to it.

He spills out onto the sidewalk, nearly stumbles straight into her. He stops short with his hand catching her by the waist and his smile lighting up his face like the lights across the city.

"You're here early," he breathes, beaming back at her with that crooked little boy smile, as if his Christmas wish just came true.

"Surprise?" she grins, humming as he leans in to kiss her, hard and fast, a warm and wonderful contrast to the cold December air.

Kate cups his cheek with the hand not holding to her suitcase, sealing her cool fingers to his skin. Castle draws back from her reluctantly, his brow scrunching just slightly. His hand rises to cover hers.

He's so close, close enough for her to witness the moment realization flares through his eyes.

His thumb strokes over the ring on her finger, flecks of gold bursting through his gaze, and he finally turns his head to see for himself.

"You're here and you're wearing my ring," he murmurs, lowering her hand between them and examining the diamond band taking up residence on her finger. "Does this mean - are you-"

Kate flips her palm to curl her fingers around his, dragging him in for one more kiss in the cold. They have a lot to talk about, her job and his ring and everything in between, but right now, all she wants is to revel in the joy she managed to bring to his eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Castle," she whispers against his lips.

* * *

He only lets go of her hand to cradle her face in his, to twine his fingers through her hair, and kiss her thoroughly.

A soft moan slips from her lips and her body sways into him, pushing him back inside.

The suitcase catches in the door and Kate huffs, pulls away from his mouth to yank the luggage inside.

"This is the best gift," he breathes, his hands still at her jaw, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth as it lifts with her returning smile. "I can't believe you're here."

She releases her suitcase to wrap her arms tight around his neck, rising on the toes of her boots to kiss him again. The heels give her the height and press her in closer against him, has him grinning into the excited seal of her lips.

"I missed you," she admits, dropping back to the soles of her shoes. "And Christmas was driving me crazy down there by myself."

"Which is why your Christmases and days leading up to them should always be spent with me," he murmurs, lowering his hands to reach past her for the suitcase. "Are you still staying until New Year's?"

She hesitates and his heart does too. "Yeah, but Castle, there's something I need to talk to you about."

The words 'we need to talk' coming from a woman he's seeing never mean good news, but he reminds himself that this isn't any other woman. This is Kate and she's not breaking up with him, of that he's certain.

"Okay, let's head up to the loft," he murmurs, hauling her luggage behind him. "Jeez, since when do you pack heavy?"

She ducks her head, hiding a smile. "Kind of what I need to talk to you about."

He watches her curiously through their walk to the elevator, determining that whatever news she has for him can't be bad.

* * *

"Wow, you really went all out this year," Kate appraises, walking into the transformed winter wonderland of the loft. She hasn't been here since the near end of November, when the interior of his home was still draped with autumn decor. Every Christmas decoration imaginable consumes it now. "It looks even more magical than last year."

"Tell Alexis that," he sighs, rolling her suitcase to his office's doorway. "She complained that I was taking it too far this year just because it took an extra day to finish. Told her it was worth it."

"A week of marathon decorating is a bit extreme," she concedes with a smirk.

"Just wait until next year," he warns, abandoning her suitcase to join her by the tree. "Wherever we spend Christmas, I'm dragging my decorating traditions with us."

"Or we could just spend it here," she shrugs, her heart speeding up just slightly. "We could... spend every holiday here."

"Kate, I can't ask you to fly down that often," he murmurs with a gentle shake of his head. "You have a demanding job and-"

"No, Rick," she stops him, shifting to take his hips with her hands, curling her fingers in the soft fabric of his t-shirt. He's watching her with his brow in an adorable furrow, his lips pursed with questions. "I meant, what if I just... came home?"

He blinks. "From DC? Wait, like - quit your job and move back?"

Uncertainty flutters in her gut. She thought... well, she _hoped_ he would be overjoyed by the prospect of having her back in the city, of having things back to the way they were, but he looks less than thrilled.

"Yeah, I - maybe I should have talked to you first, but I met with Gates when I landed, discussed what it would take to get my old job back," she explains and his brow hitches.

"And?"

"She says there's an opening for me, if I want it," she reveals, snagging her bottom lip between her teeth.

"And do you want it?" he asks, his chest still, as if he's holding his breath.

"I do," she murmurs, tugging him closer. "I like my job at the AG office, but it's not the same. I miss my work at the Twelfth, I miss putting the victims and their families first rather than prioritizing politics," she mutters, feeling his hands lift to splay at her spine. "But even more than that, I miss my partner. Miss you."

She sucks in a breath, but the strange flicker of disappointment she caught in his gaze dissipates beneath the flare of exuberance, the beam of his smile spreading across his face just before he darts in to kiss her.

Kate sighs against his mouth, releasing his hips to lace her arms around his back.

"You're marrying me, you're coming home, and we're going back to the Twelfth? You really are the gift that keeps on giving tonight," he mumbles and she laughs, nips at his lip before she parts from his mouth. "Makes my gift pretty insignificant."

She glances up in confusion. "We said no gifts, remember? This is just... what's supposed to happen, how it's supposed to be."

"Careful, Beckett," he warns, extricating one of his arms to lift a hand to her cheek, brush a strand of hair behind her ear. "Almost sounds like you're believing in fate."

"Not fate," she murmurs, covering his hand and turning her head to press a quick kiss to his palm. "Just us. Now, what gift?"

He sighs, knocks his forehead to hers for a moment before disentangling from her and stepping up to the magnificent Christmas tree that lights up the living room. She watches him pluck an ornament from one of the branches, clutching it in his palm, and dropping it into hers.

Kate looks down to the key attached to a red ribbon in her hand. Her brow knits.

"What is this to?"

"It was going to be a key to a DC apartment." Her eyes flash back to him, the disappointment suddenly making sense, but he doesn't look dismayed anymore. Only happy. "I'll have to call the real estate agents, but-"

"You were going to get an apartment in DC?" she whispers, stroking her thumb over the gold teeth of the key.

It's like the Gift of the Magi, the story of a woman cutting her gorgeous long hair to buy her husband a chain for his watch, while the husband sells his watch to afford a brush for his wife. They're both left with useless possessions, but a priceless form of love for each other.

"I was going to give it to you on Christmas morning, show you the places I set up viewings for, and then when I flew back with you after New Year's, we could pick the one we like best. Though, I admit that I like your plan better." The smile is curling at his lips, illuminating his face with the lights of the tree, but the look he's giving her is serious, promising. In a forever kind of way. "I can write from anywhere. I will, if that's what you want. But I'm not giving you up again."

Her heart swells hard and fast in her chest, makes her breathless, and Kate surges forward to wrap her arms around his neck. She buries her face in the warmth of his throat and he hugs her back, holds her tight.

"I love you," she breathes, the key digging into her palm.

"I love you too." Castle turns his head to press his lips to her temple. "And I'll follow you anywhere, Kate."


	2. State of Grace

_Chapter 2: State of Grace_

 _In 'State of Grace', Kate Beckett and her daughter Grace meet Rick and Alexis Castle. This chapter is set prior to the final chapter/epilogue of the original story._

* * *

Grace is nestled between them, her socked toes in Castle's lap and her head resting against Kate's chest. A mug of hot cocoa is cradled in her palms, but the girl's eyes are closed, her face relaxed. The most peaceful ten year old he's ever seen.

Christmas morning is Grace's favorite morning of the entire year, according to the girl he's spent the last three Christmases with, and it never fails to wear her out, the thrill of holiday magic, the excitement, and overflow of gifts leaving her slumped on the sofa.

"Hey, Grace, you've still got another present left," Alexis calls from her spot near the tree, her attention torn away from the brand new laptop they figured would be the perfect gift, given she's starting Columbia in the fall.

God, his girls are growing up.

Grace shifts against her mother, eyes fluttering after the consistent comb of Kate's fingers through her daughter's growing hair started to lull her to sleep.

"There's nothing left under the tree, Lexi," Grace yawns, but Kate and Alexis share a wink. His oldest daughter has always liked Kate, but in the last three years, his wife has become one of Alexis's most valued confidants, a friend she could always turn to. Just shy of being the mother she never had.

Kate nudges her kid.

"I don't know," she muses, coaxing Grace up into a sitting position. "I think I see something peeking out from one of the branches with your name on it."

Kate's daughter casts an inquisitive glance towards the evergreen, her brow falling into that adorable furrow that she without a doubt inherited from her mother.

"Rick, why don't you show her?" Kate hums, trying to suppress the smile blooming on her lips, the same spread of joy along her mouth that's been there since this surprise gift was made official yesterday morning.

"Come on, bud," Castle encourages, hoisting Grace up from the sofa with him, spinning her once, and making her laugh, before setting her down on her socked feet. "See? That looks like an envelope with your name on it, huh?"

Grace nods her agreement and it strikes him once more how different she is from most of the children her age, how she wakes Christmas morning with awe, accepts her gifts with reverence, how she appreciates every moment. She's still a little girl, but the maturity she's adopted so young ceases to astound him at times, much like it often did with Alexis.

He waits patiently for Grace to extract the envelope with her name printed in big block letters, stands back a little while she slits the top open and withdraws the papers inside.

"These look like forms Momma deals with at work," she mumbles, reading them over with concentration pinching her features. "And there's a certificate."

"Can you read what it says for us, bud?" Kate prompts, biting her bottom lip as Grace scans the sheet first, her lips parting with surprise before her wide eyes dart up to him.

"You - this - these are adoption papers," she whispers, not a question, but a realization. Castle's heart cinches with nerves, but the little girl he loves like his own is staring down at the documents with her eyes starting to glitter as her bottom lip trembles. She stops it with the pin of her teeth, another inherited trait from her mom, and lifts her hopeful gaze to him. "This means you're officially my dad now? That you're not - not just my stepdad?"

And she just looks so happy, he could cry.

He wasn't sure about the process at first, bringing it up to Kate on a whim, wondering if she would be accepting of the idea, if it's something Grace would even want. But his wife beamed at him, just like Grace beams up at him now, and they filed the papers earlier that month.

Will signed for abandonment without issue, the entire exchange quick and impersonal, and for that, Rick was relieved. He can't help holding at least a small but fierce grudge against Kate's ex, Grace's biological father. He's only met the other man in person once, but it's not an experience he (nor Will, for that matter) wishes to endure again.

"Might as well make it official," were the only words the other man offered when it came to allowing Castle to officially adopt Grace into his family. So nonchalant in giving away his little girl.

The agent knew of Rick's marriage to Kate, the parental role Castle filled for Grace, and while he doesn't believe Will was ever thrilled with the replacement, he believes the man was relieved for it.

Rick is the one who takes Grace to school in the mornings, he's the one who shares the responsibility of making her happy, comforting her when she's sad, and he's the one who loves her as if she's been his own daughter all along.

He's the one she calls 'Dad'.

 _Might as well make it official_ \- damn straight.

"Yeah," Castle answers, clearing his throat and offering Grace a smile. "Is that okay with you?"

She's nodding as she reaches for him, the papers crinkling against his back as she hugs him with all her strength, burying her face in his neck when he bends to lift her into his arms. He hears Kate sigh from the couch and props his chin on Grace's shoulder, catches the way his wife's eyes shine with more than just lights from the tree while she watches them.

"Nothing changes, you know," he reminds Grace, pressing a kiss to her temple. "Been your dad for a while now. This just puts it on paper."

Grace nods and hugs him tighter, her usual tell for when she's trying not to cry. "Does this mean I'm Grace Beckett-Castle now? Like Mom?"

He chuckles and pulls back to look at her, the little girl he's been raising with Kate for three years, his daughter.

"Won't cramp your style, will it?"

"As long as my future teachers don't try to hit on you like they did when Alexis was a kid," she murmurs solemnly, her face breaking into a grin when her sister bursts out laughing, pausing in the apparent videotaping she's been doing on her iPhone.

"That was _years_ ago," he groans, shifting to lower Grace back to her feet. "Besides, I'm taken."

"Damn right you are," Kate adds, sitting up as Grace skips towards her with the papers, lays them out across her mom's lap.

"You owe me a dollar," Grace chirps, smoothing away the wrinkles in the paper over Kate's thighs.

Kate huffs, but the smile on her lips is unbreakable. "You're already going to be put through college with your curse jar money."

"Shoot for law school, Grace," Alexis chimes in, chuckling when Kate stretches to swat at her knee while Castle stands back, observes his girls, his family.

Alexis is grinning at Kate from over the lid of her laptop while Grace curls into her mother's side, fingers tracing over the words printed on the documents in her hands, and his yearly statement is proven true once again:

Best Christmas ever.

His wife catches him staring over Grace's head, probably growing pathetically misty-eyed.

"Come here," she murmurs, just loud enough for him to hear.

Rick obeys without hesitation, crossing the few feet of distance and balancing his fist to the arm of the sofa next to her shoulder, leaning over her and Grace. Kate's hand rises to cradle his cheek in her palm and he coils his fingers at her wrist, colliding with the leather bound charm bracelet that she never takes off.

They add a new set of charms to it each year, he, Grace, and Alexis each picking one out for her. It'll weigh down her wrist soon, but the soft flare of gold in her eyes each time she opens the jewelry box in her stocking to another meaningful piece inside is too good to sacrifice for any other gift.

Except the year before last, when instead of a charm, he gave her the ring currently adorning the fourth finger on her left hand.

He brushes his thumb over this year's addition. It's a simple one, a piece of paper with indescribable scribbles engraved, but it looked close enough to the document in Grace's hands for Kate to understand, appreciate.

"Love you," she whispers, dusting a kiss to his mouth that has his heart fluttering even after three years.

He's always believed that the Christmas season carries yearly reminders of magic for everyone - the first snowfall, the excitement of gift giving, the welcome gatherings of families and friends.

Castle rests his forehead against hers, their noses bumping, and her lips spread into a smile beneath his.

"Love you too. So much, Kate."

But loving her, their family, is a kind of magic that touches him daily, the only kind of magic he needs.


	3. Creature Fear

_Chapter 3: Creature Fear_

 _Beckett and Castle take in a black cat on Halloween in early season three, this is their first Christmas together._

* * *

"He's going to hate you," she chuckles, watching from her curled up position on the couch as Castle attempts to ease a red and green sweater with a golden tinsel neckline over the kitten's head.

Sergio bats at his hand, tiny nails catching on Castle's skin. Rick hisses, drawing his scorned finger to his mouth, soothing the sting with his tongue. Kate snags her bottom lip between her teeth, tries not to laugh.

"Fine," he grumbles, dropping the Christmas sweater from the pet store to her coffee table and watching the black cat he once called bad luck leap onto the sofa next to Beckett. "But you're at least going to wear a festive collar."

"You shouldn't have made him wear that stupid turkey sweater for Thanksgiving," she muses, stroking her fingers through Sergio's fur as he settles down beside her. She smirks at the memory of the kitten dressed in a sweater with feathers protruding from the waist, resembling the mascot of Thanksgiving. Castle brought it over with the leftovers from dinner with his family and Sergio woke them both up later that night, crying for it to be taken off. "That was the first and last time he'll ever trust you with cat clothing."

"I didn't hear you complaining while you were taking pictures of him, which I believe are currently the screensavers on both your phone and home computer," he points out, rising from his knees on her living room floor. The black v-neck sweater he wears stretches across his chest as he stands, his eyes roaming her apartment while hers roam him.

After a long day at the Twelfth, a long week of investigating a triple homicide, she's wanted nothing more than a relaxing night in with her cat and the man who spent the last fifteen minutes trying to wrestle it into a sweater. Not to mention that ever since he showed up on her birthday and she couldn't resist leading him to her bedroom anymore, she hasn't been able to keep her hands off of him. Not that it surprises her. Wanting him for nearly three years, whether she chose to admit it or not, is bound to come with a prolonged period of desirable consequences.

It's been just over a month and the embers that crackle in her stomach every time he's around have yet to lose their heat.

"Do you think he would destroy Christmas decorations? A tree?" he inquires, glancing back to her with that excited gleam in his eyes that she knows too well. But Kate's brow only furrows.

"At your place?" They've never taken Sergio to the loft, solely because the idea of traveling through the city with the cat gives her a little too much anxiety. She can already imagine the chaos of Sergio loose in the subway. "It's hard to tell, you have the whole first floor covered in them-"

"No, here," he clarifies, assessing her home as if he's already plotting exactly how he plans to decorate it. It's still pretty bare, she's only been living here for a month and she wouldn't even have the furniture she ordered if Castle didn't pull the strings he thinks she doesn't know about with the shipping companies. "It's your first Christmas in your new place, Beckett. We've got to make it special!"

Kate swallows, really doesn't want to burst his bubble of excitement, but if he plans to be with her, if he plans to be around for Christmases with her…

"Castle, I don't really do Christmas," she admits, scratching behind Sergio's ears.

Castle tilts his head. "You don't celebrate it? Are you Jewish?"

She huffs a small breath of laughter, but shakes her head. "No, I just don't - after my mom died…" She purses her lips, searching for the right words, the right explanation. But all she has to do is think about how she feels every time the chill of winter begins to creep in, how the touch of cold takes her straight back to the alley where her mother was killed.

Kate risks a glance up from the sleeping kitten at her side to find him watching, waiting with so much understanding in his eyes, a fair dose of heartache too, but no pity. It's one of the things she's always appreciated most in him; he understands, he empathizes, but he's never made her feel like a victim.

It gives her the confidence to tell him the truth, to open up the way she never could with anyone else.

"We still hadn't taken our Christmas decorations down," she murmurs, busying her hands with the soft warmth of Sergio beneath her fingertips. "By the time my dad and I did, it was like we were putting Christmas away forever. We haven't opened those boxes since."

Rick finally moves from his planted position in front of her coffee table, circling the furniture to take a seat on the edge of the couch beside Sergio.

His gaze falls to the cat between them, something like shame hiding beneath his lashes. "I should've thought about that."

"You didn't know." Kate shakes her head, trails her fingers along Sergio's spine to reach Rick's thigh, brushing her knuckles to the muscle. "But it's why my dad spends each year at his cabin and ever since I became a rookie, I've volunteered to take the Christmas shift, so those other officers with families can celebrate while I keep watch."

"And you'll be taking that shift this year too?" he asks, no upset in his voice, in his eyes when they lift to meet hers. So why does she feel a hint of guilt as she nods her head?

"Look, Castle, I know you love Christmas and that you probably have a ton of traditions, but this is-"

"Your tradition," he finishes for her and her heart eases with relief. But it doesn't erase the trace of disappointment that flickered in his eyes. "I understand, Kate. I had no intentions of forcing you to compromise that and we don't have to decorate your apartment either. We'll play our first Christmas together however you want."

Their first Christmas together.

"I do hope I at least get to see you and Serg at some point during the day," he murmurs, grazing his fingers down Sergio's spine. The kitten's purring grows louder, his body going lax against Kate's thigh.

The unlucky kitten they found together at a crime scene on Halloween adores Castle, despite his recurring attempts to dress him for the holidays, and Rick adores the animal in return. They've only had the cat nearly two months, have been together for just half of that; it shouldn't feel like a big deal at all that they aren't spending Christmas together. She's never spent Christmas with any other boyfriend.

But Castle is more than a boyfriend. He's been her partner, her friend, for over two years.

"You'll see us," she assures him, slipping from beneath the cat's - their cat's - head on her lap. She leaves Sergio with a final stroke of her fingers along his head before reaching for Castle's hand.

He ascends from the couch at the tug of her fingers, swaying into her. Her body buzzes with anticipation at his proximity, always so eager for him. Physical attraction existed between them from the start. Even on the days she was tempted to shoot him herself, a part of her still wanted to press him up against the nearest wall, punish him in other ways. But over the past two years, the past two months, it's not just her skin that craves him.

"Christmas is still a few days away, Castle." Her arms twine around his neck. She's both excited and afraid that her heart wants him even more, that she's in severe danger of loving him. "Focus on spending tonight with me."

He grins, framing her hips in his all encompassing palms, and walking her backwards, towards the bedroom he's memorized the path to.

"Early Christmas present," he smirks and Kate rolls her eyes.

"You spend the night here all the time," she points out, and oh, he really does, doesn't he? She's lost count of how many times she's woken up with him in her bed, morning light streaking across his face, her cat curled on his bare chest. It's become her favorite thing to open her eyes to.

"Every night with you is a gift," he murmurs, his features softening, the smile on his lips gentle and adoring. Not a line or a tease, words she would never believe from any other man. But Castle's being genuine, always so open in his love for her, and it spikes her heart with need.

Maybe loving him back isn't such a terrifying thought after all.

Kate slows to a stop in her bedroom doorway, rises on her socked toes to kiss his mouth and bury the words she's not ready to say against his lips.

* * *

He vows to respect her traditions. Despite the hollow ache in his chest as he prepares Christmas dinner for tomorrow night, for three instead of four.

He understands, he truly does, but ever since he grew old enough to host Christmases on his own, since he was able to graduate both himself and his mother from one on one holiday takeout dinners in a tiny apartment to extravagant feasts in the loft, he's loved to go all out for Christmas, to make those he loves feel the magic. But Dick Coonan stole Kate's Christmas magic the moment he dug a knife into Johanna Beckett's side.

It's why she spends her holidays watching over the city, preventing others from suffering a similar fate. He doesn't just respect it, he admires it, admires her. But he also hopes that one day she'll be open to more, that she'll want more with him.

One day, when they have more than a cat to co-parent.

Castle pauses in his seasoning of the turkey and sighs. They've only been officially dating for a month and he's imagining a future that is _far_ out of reach and will be for a long while. He loves her, he can admit that much, he has for a while now. But she's not there yet, she can't be, and she never will be if he manages to blurt some stupid comment about the years' worth of Christmases he hopes to have with her.

The buzz of his phone on the island interrupts his dangerous line of thinking and Castle quickly wipes his hands on a dishtowel, his heart skipping as he catches sight of the screen.

"Detective Beckett," he answers with the grin bleeding into his voice.

"Hey Castle," she greets from the other end of the line. His brow furrows, ears straining for the familiar sounds of the precinct in the background, but hearing nothing. It's too quiet. "What are you doing?"

"Um," he glances to the turkey sitting half done near the sink. "Basting a turkey, actually. You?"

He can practically hear the laughter she holds on her lips. "Hoping you could meet me at my place," she parrots and he straightens with ridiculous excitement.

But… she's not supposed to be home.

"I thought you were working tonight," he says, but even so, he's already transferring the turkey back into the fridge and moving to wash his hands.

"I worked most of the day," she affirms. "But I've got the night off and since I probably won't get to see you tomorrow-"

"I'm on my way." He balances the phone between his shoulder and ear, hastily washing his hands and trotting into the living room to find Alexis dozing on the couch.

"Take your time, Rick," she chuckles, but he doesn't want to waste time on a dinner he has all night to prepare when he could be spending even a few minutes with her instead. "We can wait."

"We, huh?" He smirks, always amused by how smitten Kate Beckett is with Sergio the cat.

"Shut up and finish with your turkey," she huffs, but he knows she's smiling even as she hangs up on him.

He chuckles to himself and shoves his phone into his pocket.

"Hey, Pumpkin?" he calls, watching Alexis's eyes flutter. They've been marathoning Christmas movies all day, the comfort of the holiday season on their projector screen, the mugs of hot chocolate, and the cold weather outside finally lulling her to sleep. "Don't get up, honey. Just wanted to let you know I'm stepping out for a bit, but I'll be back."

"Mm, tell Kate and Sergio I said hi," she smirks, snuggling under the fuzzy red and green blanket.

Castle huffs and bends over the arm of the couch to kiss the top of her head.

"I will."

* * *

He arrives on Kate's doorstep twenty minutes later, two bright red stockings full and cradled in the crook of his arm. He designed Kate's, her name embroidered in elegant gold script across the fuzzy white material lining the top, while Alexis put together Sergio's, his name sewn into the top as well with the addition of a large black cat patch next to it.

He hears the scratch of nails at the door before he can even knock. Kate opens the door a moment later, shaking her head at the cat crowding her feet before trotting forward to rub against his ankles.

"Hey, Serg," he chuckles, bending to pet the kitten, but Sergio's already trying to climb Castle's jeans. Rick sighs, they're never going to break him of that habit, and scoops the cat up before he can rip a hole in his pants.

Kate grins. "He missed you."

He glances back up to see her, a little dumbstruck by how gorgeous she looks in the rich green sweater and dark jeans, her hair in soft curls, and the smile on her face calling to him.

"Or he may just smell the catnip in his Christmas stocking," Castle muses, feeling the cat pawing curiously at the gifts in Castle's opposite arm.

Kate narrows her gaze on him, but steps aside to let him in.

"I'm not dealing with that by myself," she warns, but he barely hears her. His attention is hooked on the altered setting of her apartment. The change is subtle, but he notices right away - she's put up a few decorations.

"You have a tree," he gasps, delight filling up his chest as his gaze lands on the quaint but charming little Christmas tree on her coffee table, a few classic round red, gold, and green ornaments hanging from its slim branches.

"Kind of, yeah," she grins while his eyes scan the rest of the apartment. She has a string of lights on the window sill, gold and twinkling softly, a candle that smells of gingerbread burning in her kitchen. "Oh, almost forgot."

Kate steps forward, scratching her nails under Sergio's chin before slipping a collar around his neck. It's not gold tinsel or jingle bells, but the red and green striped collar is just enough for the kitten to be content and festive at the same time.

It sums up the entire scene well. He's always gravitated towards holiday extravagance, but this… the gentle glow of lights and the tiny tree, the nuzzle of Sergio against his neck and the lovely lift of Kate's lips - it's just as wonderful, may be even better. All he could want for Christmas.

"I know it's not much, but I just wanted… I know your family is back at the loft and you can't stay long, but I hoped we could do something small tonight."

"I - yeah, yes, of course," he nods too quickly, his heart rabbiting with joy. But he forces himself to pause, to think, before he dives into Christmas Eve with her, overwhelms her with it. This is arguably one of the hardest parts of the year for her and he wants to ease the ache of it, not risk throwing any salt in the wound. "But Kate, I know Christmas means something different to you, that it can be painful, so I don't want you to-"

She quiets him with a hand to his chest, fingers climbing the neck of his sweater to caress along the side of his throat.

"It'll always be a little painful," she concedes, but she's staring up at him with what he would swear is love in her gaze. Could she love him for Christmas? "But if we're going to be spending Christmases together, maybe I want to start a few new traditions with you."

Sergio stretches at his neck, pushing his head against Kate's knuckles. He wonders if she can feel the stop and stutter of his pulse beneath her fingertips.

 _Christmases together._

Maybe he's not so alone in his hopes for a future with her, in loving her, after all.

"Well, both of you," she murmurs, cradling Sergio's face in her palm.

Castle covers the back of her hand, pressing the stockings against his chest, but he ignores the dig of gifts into his sternum. He's spending Christmas Eve with Kate Beckett in an apartment she decorated for him with their cat purring happily against his chest, and he's pretty sure she loves him.

He leans in to brush a kiss to her lips, feeling her smile against his mouth before she's kissing him back.

This is one of the best Christmases he's ever had and it's only the beginning.

"Sounds perfect."


	4. Handle With Care

_Chapter 4: Handle With Care_

 _Castle and Beckett met in a post office four years prior to this chapter, while Beckett was sending a care package to Josh and Castle was sending one to Alexis._

* * *

Lucy squeals and squirms in Kate's lap, ducking her head as she tries once more to slip the velvet red dress over her daughter's head. She lets out another whine and buries her face in Kate's chest, eluding the fabric yet again.

Her kid is driving her crazy this week.

"Come on, baby," she coaxes, smoothing back the copper curls of Lucy's hair, attempting to soothe both herself and the fussy two year old. "I thought you were excited to wear the dress Grandma got you."

"No dress!" Lucy argues, pushing away from Kate, scrambling off of her mother's lap and through the open doorway of her bedroom. Kate gives up, dropping the dress to the mattress and letting their daughter run from the room, probably to find her daddy. The fun parent.

Lucy has been testing her lately, behaving better for Castle and fighting her mother on every little thing. Kate has the patience for it, but she won't deny that it hurts, feeling alienated and unwanted by her own child.

She could really go for one of Castle's parental pep talks right about now, but her husband is busy preparing the perfect Christmas Eve for the rest of their family to arrive to. A feast for dinner, a slew of decorations that he never stops adding to, an endless stack of presents crammed under the tree. It's too hectic for her today, too much pressure, and for the first year since she found him in a post office, fell in love with the writer who gave her a life she better than she could have hoped for, she almost wishes she had to work.

Kate sits back against their daughter's slim headboard and buries her face in her hands. That's not fair, not to Castle or to Lucy, not even fair to herself. She's just so tired, has been so achingly tired throughout the last few days. Her increased workload at the precinct due to the holidays, the stress of Lucy embracing her terrible twos, and the symptoms of an oncoming cold that have been plaguing her for the past week, stealing her appetite and causing her to heave up anything she does eat, have drained every last ounce of energy from her. She just wants to curl up in bed with her husband and forget everything else.

"Kate?" Castle is standing in the doorway when she lifts her head, a touch of worry leaking into the lines around his eyes. "Hey," he murmurs, his voice soft and warm and patient despite the fact that she knows he's working to prepare dinner downstairs while she was supposed to be getting Lucy ready. "You okay? Has our child pushed you to the edge?"

The tight knot in her chest, her throat, eases. Maybe she just needs a minute with him, to remember why it's all worth it, to calm her mind and heart and-

But Lucy scampers into the room before she can answer, pacifier in her mouth, and Kate presses her fingertips to the building headache between her brows.

"Rick, we're supposed to be weaning her off of that."

He glances down to the little girl leaning into his side, smiling up at him with the pacifier between her teeth.

Castle winces. "I'm sorry, I was trying to finish the pie and she was fussing, so I just-"

"I know," Kate huffs, swinging her legs over the edge of Lucy's bed and rising to her feet. "That's why she goes to you. The one who gives her what she wants."

"Kate," he tries, but she ignores him, descending to their haunches in front of their daughter. "Here, I'll-"

"No, just - go back to your baking. I'll handle it," she sighs, taking a deep breath and reaching for Lucy with a smile she knows is weak, not fooling anyone. Including their little girl. "Hey, sweetheart, let's get you dressed."

But their daughter turns away from her, hiding her face in Castle's knees, cracking Kate's heart just a little more.

"Luc-"

"Want Daddy," she mumbles into Castle's pant leg, whining when Kate touches her waist, tries to regain her attention.

Kate swallows and straightens, ignoring the ache of rejection in her chest from her own kid. Of course, Castle understands, understands it all because he's done all of this before. He's been the perfect father to Alexis, to Lucy, and she - shit, by the looks of it, she's no better than his first ex-wife at mothering.

That particular thought stings especially bad.

"Kate," he murmurs again, already tracking her train of thought, she's sure. But no, he doesn't get it, can't possibly understand what this feels like.

"I'm just - I'm gonna go get ready. Let me know if there's anything I can do," she mutters, brushing past him for the hallway, leaving father and daughter alone.

"Beckett, it's Christmas," he calls after her, scooping Lucy up from his side and following her down the hall towards their room. "You can't be upset on Christmas."

She spins on her heel, nearly bumps into the two of them right behind her.

"I'm not _upset_. It's just a stupid holiday and it's - this is too much," she gets out, instantly hating herself for it, for the hurt immediately seeping through his features.

"You always said you love Christmases with me," he murmurs, smoothing a hand down Lucy's back as she begins to whine, feeding off of all the negative energy Kate is responsible for.

She already regrets saying it, taking out her frustrations on him on his favorite holiday, so much so that she feels sick, physically sick. Kate purses her lips; she needs to get away from him before she throws up on him.

"I, um, the pie is in the oven. The timer is automatic, so it'll shut off and cool on its own. I'm going to take Lucy out for a few minutes, might help with the crankiness," he explains, but he won't look at her.

"Rick," she whispers, but he shakes his head, leaning in to press a quick kiss to her forehead.

"Just take some space to think, Kate," he murmurs before he pulls away, disappearing down the stairs with their daughter watching her from over his shoulder.

She wants to go after him, but her throat burns with acid, panic clawing at her chest. She turns back for their bedroom instead, rushing for the en suite before she loses the pancakes he made for breakfast all over the floor.

Kate drops to her knees in front of the toilet, scraping her hair back as she wretches, choking on sobs as she hears the front door lock downstairs.

God, what is _wrong_ with her?

Her insides reach a truce and she carefully sits back on her heels, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth while her spine seals to the cold tile of the wall. She closes her eyes, but sees the wounded look on his face, the disappointment, behind her lids.

She _does_ love Christmases with him, more than she thought she ever could. He taught her that the holidays didn't have to be so heavily tainted with grief, he showed her that they could still be beautiful, that she could even love them again after resenting them for so long.

Kate drops her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling while she does her best to take a deep breath, in and out. It'll be okay. She regrets what she said, how she acted, but she can fix it. They'll be okay. So why does she feel so sick inside?

They've had petty arguments before, fought over stupid things, and it always stings a little, but never once has it left her questioning the strength of _them_. And she isn't now.

But her stomach won't stop rolling, waves of acid licking at her chest, heaving up to her throat. She blames it on a brewing cold, but the symptoms almost remind her of when she was-

Kate's eyes go wide.

No.

The bathroom is already a mess, neglected over these past few days by the two of them, and she worsens the disaster by tearing the place apart in search of a pregnancy test.

Her heart pounds the entire time, ready to beat out of her chest by the time she finds two boxes, two different brands, and grabs one of each. She counts the full five minutes in her head, attempting to calm the panic attack building in her chest throughout the endless murmur of seconds leaving her lips. She can't have another baby, not now. They've talked about having more kids, but not so soon. Not when she can't even handle one.

But Kate doesn't need a pregnancy test to confirm what she can already feel to be true.

She checks both of the tests nonetheless and bites back the tears in her throat at the matching positive signs.

* * *

When she ventures downstairs, the tears on her cheeks dry, her panic passed, she's relieved to find that Castle and Lucy aren't back yet. She has no idea what they're going to do, but she needs more time to gather herself, to take Castle's advice for their fussy daughter and get some fresh air.

Kate grabs her coat from the closet near the door and pulls on a warm pair of boots.

She won't be long, has to be back for Christmas Eve dinner with her dad, Martha, Alexis, and Alexis's fiance (which Castle still needs frequent comforting over), but for now, she sucks in a lungful of the cold, lets the snow tangle in her hair, and walks without thinking. It leads her a few blocks uptown, the opposite direction she assumes her husband and daughter took.

She isn't paying attention to where she's going until she looks up, only minutes away from the Twelfth and standing in front of a post office.

Their post office.

She's never been hit with memories, good memories, so fast. But she can recall the drizzle of rain, the rush she was in to mail that care package to Haiti, the bright sound of his voice with striking clarity. The way her heart quickened when she looked up to find Richard Castle staring back at her.

Her lips quirk.

The line she drew between them was pointless from the start; they were always toeing it, erasing it that first time he invited her to the Hamptons with a first kiss in the ocean. She remembers the repercussions, the first dates and first times, falling so hopelessly in love with him that it made her more hopeful than she's ever been.

She remembers taking a bullet in his loft, going back to the beach house to heal from it with Castle keeping her sane, making her smile even when she was in utter agony. He was always with her through the best and the worst, changing her life in ways that she never could have fathomed, whether it be uncovering a cassette tape he found in her mother's elephants, putting away William Bracken with him at her side, or surprising her with a marriage proposal scribbled in a book written for her.

The first time she found out she was pregnant and how overwhelmed he was with joy, the last two years raising Lucy…

It all started here. And she was beginning to take it for granted.

Kate takes a determined step forward, towards the post office, but collides with another body before she can cross the street.

Large hands catch her by the shoulders, righting them both, and Kate glances up, feel her breath catch with surprise.

"Josh," she murmurs, blinking once before stepping back. He looks the same, but different - still a giant mass of a man, but his hair is shorter, the messy mane of dark hair shaved, and a thick beard consumes his chin, and he looks happier. A lot happier.

"Kate," her ex-boyfriend smiles. "Wow, it's been a long time. How are you?"

"I'm - good, really good," she admits, feeling her own smile curl at her lips. Because she is, and she'll be even better once she talks to Castle later. "What about you? Still saving the world?"

"Oh yeah," he grins, shoving his hands into his coat pockets and rocking back on his heels. "I'm busier than ever with Doctors Without Borders, but I'm actually here for Christmas this year. I was just mailing a care package to my girl in Indonesia." His gaze flickers to her exposed left hand, the ring she wears proudly. She doesn't doubt he already knows who gave it to her. "What are you doing out here on Christmas Eve? Don't tell me the writer is away on a book tour at this time and you gotta mail him a package too?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, Rick is back at home with our daughter. I just had to run out for a few errands."

"A daughter?" His smile softens. "That's great, Kate. I'm really happy for you. For you and Rick both. You mind telling him that for me? I still kinda bad for… well, you know."

"Punching my husband in the face?" she fills in, curving an eyebrow at him, amused by the flush of red to Josh's cheeks. From what she remembers, he wasn't very easy to embarrass.

"Yeah, that."

"It was years ago, Josh. And from what he's told me, Castle forgave you for it," she smirks, but her ex only shrugs.

"Yeah, but an apology in the middle of the hospital while you were dying never felt like the most sincere."

Her heart stutters a little at that, hates imagining Rick's time stuck in the hospital after she was shot in his home, waiting while she was in surgery. But Kate nods, mimicking his position and pushing her frigid fingers into her coat pockets.

"I'll let him know."

"Thanks. Well, I better go. I gotta take the train to Jersey to see my mom," he grins, patting her on the arm. "It was good seeing you, Kate. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," Kate murmurs as Josh brushes past her, disappearing into the crowd of Christmas crazed pedestrians.

She never imagined what it would be like to run into him again, especially after managing to avoid any kind of reunion since the day in her apartment doorway, when he accused her of cheating and punched Castle in the jaw for being a co-conspirator. She figured she would always hate him for that, but seeing him again now… it only served as the extra reminder that she needed today.

She might not have ever met Rick if she didn't come to this post office to mail a package to Josh nearly four years ago. She might have missed out on the beautiful life she has with the man who's probably back at the loft with their daughter right now, preparing a Christmas dinner with his heart scorned because of her.

Kate swallows and glances back to the post office across the street.

She can do more than fix this. She can turn it into something wonderful, something worth celebrating on Christmas Eve.

* * *

By the time Kate makes it back to the loft, her lungs are burning from the rush of her walk home, the sharp inhales of cold air. She jogs up the three steps that lead to their front door, grateful to find he left it unlocked. He and Lucy are back.

Kate pushes inside, striding through the foyer until she finds him in the kitchen, surrounded by a pair of redheads and Shawn, Alexis's fiancé, who all apparently arrived early. Her heart sinks a little.

"So, no cranberry sauce after all?" Castle forces a smile, covering for her.

Kate sighs, sweet man.

"No, all out," she murmurs, catching his gaze and receiving a soft twitch of his lips in response. He's already forgiven her, she can see that, but she wants more than a pass for her behavior earlier.

"Oh, Katherine, darling," Martha beams, abandoning Castle's side and the wine bottle on the counter to greet Kate with open arms. "Thank goodness you're here. It's been ages since I last saw you."

Kate accepts Martha's embrace with a smile, allowing the matriarch to envelope her in one of her firm hugs that always manages to wrap Kate in the kind of warmth only a mother can provide.

"Hey Martha," she chuckles, returning her embrace with a squeeze. "How has the broadway tour been?"

"Marvelous," Martha answers with relish, pulling back from Kate to cup her face in her hands before letting go. "I'll regale you all with my best stories over dinner."

"We can't wait," Castle deadpans, earning a nudge of reprimand from Alexis, but his eyes are meeting hers over his mother's head. They really need to talk, if only for a moment.

"Merry Christmas, Kate," Alexis adds with a grin, shifting past Castle to check the ham in the oven, already making herself at home in the kitchen. His daughter is no stranger to their place, seeking refuge here throughout most of her college years when dorm life became too much of a hassle.

"Merry Christmas, Captain," Shawn greets, stepping up to shake Kate's hand, even as Castle glares from across the island.

"Thanks, Andrews," she murmurs, shooting Castle a look. It was her own fault that Alexis met him last year, stopping by the precinct for Kate and running into the assistant DA who happened to be on the homicide floor at the same time.

"Darling, don't be so formal," Martha teases, patting Shawn on the shoulder. But it's the other man's first Christmas with them, with the Castles, and Kate doesn't blame him for the nerves she can feel radiating through Shawn's brief handshake.

"Where's Lucy?" Kate asks, earning the shuffle of Castle's body towards her.

"Napping. We walked around outside for a few minutes, wore her out. Thankfully," he adds with a sigh.

"Ah, the terrible twos," Martha quips, sauntering past them for the living room. "She must have inherited them from Richard."

"Excuse me?" he huffs while Alexis snickers from behind

"Well, I'm more inclined to assume that Katherine was a little angel," she murmurs with an indulgent smile as she descends to the sofa, wine glass rising to her lips. "You were quite the opposite at that age."

"Mother," he huffs, but Kate snags his fingers, his attention.

"Babe, can you come check on Lucy with me?"

His throat bobs and he glances back to his daughter, still busy with food prep and Shawn making her smile. "Yeah, yeah, of course." He redirects his eyes to his mother, already watching them. "We'll be right back."

"Take your time, darlings," Martha waves them off. "I'll keep an eye on the door for Jim, as well as the lovebirds."

"Thank you, Mother," Castle mutters as he walks to the stairs with Kate.

She keeps their fingers in a knot until they reach the top floor, using her grip to tug him into their room. He follows reluctantly, easing the door shut with a silent click.

"Kate, I know we have to talk, but maybe we should wait until-"

She bands her arms around his neck, causing his words to fall silent against her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, pressing her apology to his cheek. "I'm so sorry about earlier, about everything."

Castle's hands hesitate for only a moment before they slide beneath the coat still draped over her shoulders, soothing up and down her back. Comforting her.

"Kate," he breathes when he feels her face crumpling, lips trembling against his jaw. He turns his head, their noses clashing, foreheads knocking together. "Hey, love, it's okay. It was a rough morning, it happens-"

"I do love Christmases with you," she murmurs, doing her best to blink away the moisture filling her eyes. She just fixed her makeup before she left and they have too many family members downstairs expecting a happy Christmas for her to cry anymore. "I never would have been able to enjoy it again if it weren't for you. For Lucy."

"I know, I know," he soothes, but she shakes her head.

"I was being a bitch earlier-"

"You were being a stressed out mother dealing with an occasionally bratty kid and a sometimes overbearing husband," he corrects, but Kate huffs, draws one of her hands back to cradle his cheek.

"You're not overbearing," she mutters, grazing her nose along his. "You were trying to make Christmas as special as possible, like you do every year."

"I try," he shrugs, running his knuckles along her spine. "But, Kate, really, if it's ever too much-"

"No," she murmurs, using the tips of her fingers at his jaw to hold him steady as she brushes a kiss to his mouth. He sighs against her lips, a breath of relief in his kiss. "Not too much. It's perfect, Castle. Always has been."

"Momma." Kate pulls back from him to see their daughter standing in the doorway, the dress from earlier finally on, but the locks of her hair matted to the side of her face pressed with the creases of a pillow.

"Turns out it's easiest to dress her when she's passed out," Castle whispers into her ear and Kate laughs, smiles down at their daughter.

"Hey pretty girl, good nap?"

Lucy rubs her eyes and toddles over to them, colliding with Kate's legs.

"You know she adores you, right?" he murmurs while she bends to hoist her daughter into her arms. Lucy curls into her chest, snuggling her face against Kate's neck, as if reinforcing the statement.

"I got scared," Kate confesses, dusting her lips to the warm, baby soft skin of Lucy's forehead. "I want to be a good mom to her-"

"Kate," he whispers, incredulous, but she touches her thumb to his bottom lip.

"I know what you went through with Meredith, what Alexis went through-"

"Katherine Beckett," he growls, lowering his voice as their sleepy daughter shifts between them. "You are _nothing_ like Meredith, or any other flighty, half-assed mother out there. You'd give everything for our kid, you already have."

Kate purses her lips, but Castle squeezes her hip.

"There's no one else I would ever want to do this with, that I'd ever trust enough or have so much faith in. Lucy's in a phase, the same one Alexis and pretty much every other child goes through, but it doesn't change the fact that we're doing a damn job raising her. Not me, _us_ ," he says with so much conviction, her heart is brimming with it. "You're an extraordinary woman, Kate. An amazing wife and an incredible mother. Don't you ever doubt that."

Kate cranes her neck to kiss him once more, his thumb swiping at the corner of her eye, catching any tears before they can fall.

"It's mutual, you know?" she whispers, swaying into him, cradling Lucy in her arms, against the encompassing warmth of Castle's chest. "There's no one else I'd rather be doing this with, anything with. I love you."

He smiles against her lips, lifts his chin just slightly to kiss her forehead.

"I love you too. Now, let's get back down there before my mother starts convincing everyone we're up here working on baby number two."

"Castle," she chokes, her heart skittering. But he's chuckling into her skin and leaning back, sweeping a quick kiss to the top of Lucy's head before he starts for the door.

"Oh, baby," she whispers, breathing the words against Lucy's temple. "I hope you and Daddy really are okay with a baby number two."

Lucy hums, her lashes fluttering at Kate's throat.

"You okay with a brother or sister?" she murmurs under her breath, following Castle out to the stairs.

"Bru-der," Lucy whispers, curling her fingers in the neck of Kate's sweater.

"No promises on that one," she chuckles, but for the first time today, excitement flickers in her chest, striking a surge of it through her sternum. She did tell him once that she hoped they would have a boy next.

* * *

Christmas Eve with their family lasts past nightfall, past Lucy's bedtime, and Kate forces herself to remain patient for another moment alone with him. Her dad left half an hour ago and Martha has just departed to the downstairs guest room, Alexis and Shawn were heading back home despite Castle's offer for them to stay for the night, and Kate is slipping out of Lucy's room after laying her down with soft promises of presents from Santa that will be waiting for her in the morning. Castle carried their daughter to bed with her, helped Kate tuck her in, but left prematurely to allow them a moment Kate didn't know she needed.

The smile of gratitude she gave him for the gesture wasn't nearly enough.

She finds him waiting for her downstairs by the Christmas tree, a mug of hot chocolate cradled to his chest. His gaze drifts from the tree as he hears her feet on the hardwood floor.

"Did she go down okay?" he asks and Kate nods, shuffling across the living room to sit beside him on the sofa.

"Out like a light, eager for Santa," she grins, curling into Castle's side when his arm laces around her shoulders. "Thank you, by the way."

"Nothing to thank me for," he murmurs, but Kate shakes her head, coasts her hand up his jaw to turn his face towards hers.

"Everything to thank you for."

"Kate-"

"I ran into Josh today." His eyebrows skyrocket. "I was walking - kinda taking your suggestion for Lucy, walking it off - and I ended up at our old post office."

" _Our_ post office, huh?" he smirks, the tease glittering in his gaze.

"Yeah, where we met," she murmurs, even though he already knows exactly what she's talking about.

Castle hums, the corners of his mouth curling with a smile, but mischief still lingers in his gaze. "And where exactly does Doctor Motorcycle Boy fit into this equation?"

Kate rolls her eyes. "He was sending a care package to his girlfriend."

"Oh, irony," he chuckles and she huffs, squeezes his thigh.

"Anyway, aside from sending more belated apologies for punching you in the face-" Castle grunts and she tilts her head, skims her lips to the spot she memorized along his jaw, where her ex-boyfriend's fist once connected with. "Seeing Josh again, going back to where you and I began - it just cemented everything, reminded me how lucky I am that we found each other that day. How I shouldn't take it for granted."

"Kate," he murmurs, lowering his hot chocolate to sit between his thighs, replacing the cup in his palm with the bone of her cheek. "We already talked about that."

"Not everything I wanted to talk about," she admits, wrapping one of her hands at his wrist, stroking her thumb to the soft skin along the inside, where the steady thrum of his pulse lies.

He quirks an eyebrow at her.

"Meeting you at the post office, falling in love with you, that was just the start." The love blooms in his eyes, her favorite shade of blue, and blossoms to spread through the lines of his features - the beautiful curves around his mouth that speak to the prominent laughter that leaves his lips on a daily basis, the branches that grow from the corners of his eyes and crinkle with his smile. She could never grow tired of seeing it, never wants to stop eliciting that look.

"You're right," he nods. "But we're not even close to the end, Kate. I promise you that."

"Oh, I know we aren't," she murmurs, drawing his hand from her face, down to her stomach. He watches quizzically as she guides their tangled hands below her shirt, his brow falling into an almost comical furrow.

"What is that?" he chuckles, easing back just enough to lift the hem of her sweater, revealing the sticker she couldn't resist grabbing at the post office to plaster across her abdomen.

It's the size of his palm, white with large black letters and bright red lining:

 _Fragile. Handle With Care._

He understands instantly.

Castle's eyes jerk back to hers.

"Kate," he whispers, tentative hope in her name, and skims his thumb along the edge of the sticker. "Are you…"

She nods, grinning into the breathless kiss he surges forward to seal against her lips, his thumb still pressed to the sticker on her stomach. Their kiss falls apart around her smile and she watches as he pulls back once more, his gaze darting back to the packing sticker, all of her doubts erased by the wonder claiming every inch of his face.

No, their story isn't over. They're just moving onto a new chapter.

"Merry Christmas, Castle."


	5. carry you with me

_Chapter 5: carry you with me_

 _In Knockout, the bullet Beckett takes hits her spine instead of her heart, paralyzing her from the waist down. This chapter is an insert set between chapters one and two - Beckett's first Christmas not only living with her new condition, but also Castle._

* * *

She doesn't belong in his loft for Christmas.

Despite Castle's persistent reassurances, she can feel the waves of bitterness born of broken traditions and her unwanted presence crashing over her. It has her hiding away in his bedroom on Christmas Eve, wishing for the millionth time that her stupid legs worked and could carry her to the front door unnoticed.

Kinda hard to escape without being heard when your only way of getting around is a clunky wheelchair.

Kate glares at the thing, waiting for her to suck it up and heave her body into the expensive cushioned seat Castle customized it with. She hates him for putting so much money into it, trying to make the experience of being stuck in a chair for the rest of her life a little less miserable.

He was always doing that for her, trying to make it better.

"Hey, what're you doing in here?"

Kate glances up from the edge of his bed, the bed he shares with her. It's been a few months and he never had any obligations to her, no reasons to go out of his way to help her, but it didn't stop him from changing his entire life for her, opening his home to her, his heart.

She took it all, whether she wanted to or not. She found a home in the loft, in him, and now, her selfish heart doesn't want to leave, even though she should. She should really just find a place of her own, stop depending on him so much, burdening his family.

He left her mere minutes ago to join his mother and daughter for Christmas dinner, but he can never abandon her for long. She promised to follow, to transfer from the bed to her chair without assistance - she's got the hang of it now, hasn't fallen in months - but she has yet to will herself to move.

"Kate?" he murmurs, but even as her name leaves his lips like a question, the knowledge is already filling his gaze. Nothing new. He's always able to do that now, not that he wasn't already skilled in figuring her out before, back when they were just friends, a writer and muse, partners. But now, he doesn't even have to try, practically reading her mind with a single glance.

She sighs, lowers her gaze to the sweater he helped her into this morning, laughing at her as he pulled the cashmere past her head, curtaining her face in hair. She huffed, but swept the strands back from her eyes and caught him by the shirt collar. She smiled while she kissed him.

Smiling and kissing him on a holiday she's always hated, as if she isn't broken in every way possible.

It's Christmas Eve, the first one she's spending paralyzed from the waist down due to the bullet a sniper lodged into her spine at Montgomery's funeral, the first year she's been forced to sacrifice her own Christmas tradition of keeping watch over the city in favor of being stuck in a wheelchair.

So of course he insisted that she spend the holiday with him and his family, as if she or they have a choice. Where else would she go?

Castle took her in after she was released from the hospital, the physical rehab center she knows he paid for but refuses to admit to. By no means did she intend for the time in his loft to be permanent, but she was never necessarily in the right condition to hunt for a wheelchair friendly apartment and Castle was never very eager to help her look, to encourage her to leave. Especially after she confessed to hearing his words in the cemetery within only a month of living with him.

Especially after she said them back.

Staying with the man who loved her before the physical damage matched the internal, who loves her now despite it all, isn't so bad. He makes her life easier, makes her feel normal, almost makes her forget.

The change didn't bother Martha, his mother all too welcoming, fussing and fawning over Kate whenever given the chance, but his daughter never wanted her here. Not after Castle nearly took the bullet meant for Kate, not when he was so willing to risk his life, die for her all over again.

Alexis has softened to her over the last six months, no longer glaring when she thought Kate wasn't looking, no longer arguing with Castle behind closed doors and open bookshelves, no longer hating her so openly. It was progress, but it doesn't mean Alexis suddenly wants her intruding on their Christmas.

"I think I'm just going to stay with my dad for Christmas, Rick," she lies, picking at the knee of her jeans. He helped her slide into those too. Lying her down on the bed, lips scaling her useless legs along the way, and traveling higher until her cells sizzled with sensation and her skin shivered beneath his mouth, until she could feel his touch like fire. Until he was the only thing she felt.

"He's driving down from the cabin to pick you up?" Castle challenges and Kate's gaze automatically snaps back to him.

He isn't supposed to know that.

"I hate that you guys talk," she mutters, squaring her jaw as he circles the foot of the bed to sit down beside her.

"I like him," Castle muses. "I invited him over for dinner tonight, but he was already out of town. He does plan to join us for New Year's, though."

"Join you," she corrects quietly, too cowardly to look at him, but catching the crease of his brow from the corner of her eye. "Not us. This is your home, your family, Castle. Not mine."

"What are you talking about?" The confusion prevails in his voice, but it's the hint of hurt that forces her to meet his eyes again, witness the damage her words have done. "You've been living here since you were able to be released. Look, I know I've been dragging my feet about apartment searching, but if it's what you want, I can-"

"No," she sighs, sucking in a slow breath. "It's not that."

"Then what, Kate? You come home with me after work at the precinct, you have dinner with my daughter and help her with her homework afterwards, you sleep in this bed with me every night," he lists adamantly. "Of course this is your home and those two women waiting for us in the dining room look at you like family."

She bites her bottom lip, her head shaking without her permission. "Rick."

"Is this about Alexis?" he murmurs a little quieter. "Because I really thought you guys were starting to hit it off-"

"No, it's not her," she murmurs, a half truth, but it's _not_. Not completely. "It's - it's me. As always. Castle, these are _your_ family traditions. You, Alexis, Martha - your lives have been turned upside down this past year because of me and it's not fair for me to take Christmas from you - from them - too."

"Kate, you aren't upsetting any traditions by being here," he argues, vehement and moving from beside her to crouch in front of her. Allowing her the rare opportunity to be at the head of their height difference, knowing how tired she grows of having to look up to meet everyone else's gaze. "Did Alexis or my mother seem upset when you helped us decorate a few weeks ago? Because that's one of our greatest traditions and you all seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. Or what about while you were helping prepare Christmas dinner last night, this morning? Another tradition I didn't see anyone complaining about you participating in."

"Castle."

But he isn't done.

"They definitely aren't upset right now. I told them they could start eating, but they wanted to wait. For you, for us all to be together, because you're _family_ , Kate. You're my family and this may not be the way any of us wanted it to happen, with you shot and in a wheelchair, but I'd never not want you here."

She fists her hands atop her thighs before unfurling her fingers and splaying them across her unfeeling knees.

"I'm not trying to pressure you, if you really don't want to go out there, you don't have to. I'll build you a nest in here, set you up with a plethora of Christmas movies, and bring you a plate." His lips quirk and he props one of his hands atop her knees, squeezing. She so badly wishes she could feel it. "Then I'll come be a recluse with you for Christmas."

"I'm not letting you do that," she huffs, reaching for his hand and drawing his knuckles to her lips, sealing her kiss to his skin with the press of her cheek.

"If it's what you want, then you won't have a choice," he shrugs, so damn stubborn. She never would have fathomed that Castle could compete with her on that front, but any time she puts up a fight against him, he rarely folds as she once would have expected him to.

"You love me too much," she rasps, swallowing hard to stop the tears in her throat from climbing to prick her eyes.

"Not possible," he scoffs, softer, stretching his thumb to graze the underside of her jaw. "But I do love you, Kate, and I just want you to be happy. To know you belong."

Every time he says it, his voice gentle and sure, it aids in ridding her mind of the devastated memory of the words escaping with his tears that day in the cemetery, while she laid dying beneath him.

Kate exhales the breath she didn't realize she was holding and reaches for his shirt collar, choking on a watery shred of laughter caught in her throat as he shuffles forward on his knees to fit between hers. Castle's arms wrap tight and warm around her torso and she buries her face in his shoulder, cinches her arms around his neck in return.

"You make me happy," she confesses, biting back the urge to say any more, to say that the one thing she's certain of is that she belongs wherever he is. It's far too soon for that, isn't it? Too soon for her to even be thinking about him with such finality.

Her spine stiffens at the tentative knock on their bedroom door, but Castle smoothes his hand down her back, eases from between her legs.

"We're coming," he answers, glancing back to Kate for confirmation.

She unfurls her arms from around his neck, takes a deep breath for strength, and maneuvers herself into the chair beside the bed.

"Kate?" Alexis pokes her head in anyway, her eyes flicking to Beckett with a strange hint of… is that guilt in her gaze? "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I just - I was having trouble getting into my chair," she fibs, flexing her fingers around the wheels, but Alexis hardly looks convinced.

"Eavesdropping, Pumpkin?" Castle coaxes with an arch of his brow. The flood of color to Alexis's cheeks confirms the suspicion.

"I wasn't, I just - wanted to make sure you guys were still coming before the food got cold and I - I overheard some of your conversation. "

Kate's insides twist with dread, expecting all of her suspicions to be confirmed, for Alexis to tell her father that she just can't stand it anymore, that Kate should make good on her own idea and find somewhere else to spend Christmas.

Alexis won't meet either of their gazes, though, lowering hers to the floor.

"Kate, I hated it when Dad first brought you here." Castle makes a strangled noise of disapproval in his throat, but Kate quiets him with a hand to his thigh, lets his daughter continue with her confession. No matter how brutal. "I hated you for things you weren't responsible for, couldn't control, and I made sure you felt it. I made sure you felt like you weren't welcome here."

Kate purses her lips, her instinct to deny it, offer the girl some comforting words, but Alexis has had enough coddling. And at least now Kate knows she hasn't been imagining the loathing she's caused.

"We've been getting along better, though, and I've enjoyed that, I really have, but I know I wasn't exactly showing you much of the Christmas spirit this year," his daughter mumbles, twisting her hands in front of her. "It hasn't been fair to you. _I_ haven't been fair. And I - I knew how I was acting was wrong, but it wasn't until I heard you talking to Dad just now, about wanting to leave, to realize how… horrible I've been."

"Alexis," she sighs, but his daughter finally lifts her gaze, bright blue eyes like her father's wet and threatening tears.

"I always liked you, that never changed, I was just - I was angry. Mad at my dad for jumping in front of that bullet, mad at the person who shot you, for causing all of this," she rambles, wiping away the first tear that treads her cheek with a quick swipe of her fingers. "But none of it was your fault. None of it was fair and I only added to that by treating you like - like an inconvenience. You're welcome here, Kate. You - I never thought I'd say this, but you belong with my dad, with us."

Kate's relieved that she's been forced to sit for this, because Alexis's words definitely would have knocked her on her ass otherwise.

"Rick," she murmurs without looking at him, feeling his attention fall to her with reluctance. "Can you lift me up?"

Castle doesn't hesitate, hooking his hands beneath her underarms in a practiced move and hauling her to her feet, keeping her steady.

With Castle supporting her, she holds out an arm to Alexis, watching his daughter's chest shudder with a breath as she covers the few steps of distance between Kate and the doorway. Alexis folds her arms around Beckett, pressing her cheek to her shoulder.

"We're all good, bud," Kate murmurs, brushing a hand up and down Alexis's back, feeling Castle's thumb mimicking the soothing motion along her waist as he holds to her hips. "I understood-"

He pinches her.

Kate shoots him a glare, but Alexis is lifting her head, blinking away the last of the moisture from her eyes.

"No," she murmurs, mustering a smile, a genuine one for a change. "Dad's right, you're family. Have been for a while and I promise to start treating you like it."

"Even family fights sometimes," Kate shrugs, easing the lengthy strands of Alexis's hair back from her shoulders. "But thank you, Alexis."

"This is all very sweet," Martha calls from the other room and she swears that both hers and Alexis's cheeks simultaneously catch fire. "But I'm starving, darlings. So please move this Hallmark moment to the dining room."

Castle chokes on a laugh and leans in to press a kiss to Alexis's head, something along the lines of 'good girl' being murmured into her hair, before he pulls back, drawing Kate into his chest.

"Mother's right. No reason to starve her on Christmas," Castle chuckles, banding his arms around Kate's stomach. "Meet you out there, Pumpkin."

Alexis steps back, her shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath. She leaves the room looking lighter than she has since Kate was shot.

"Castle," she hums as he presses his cheek to hers. Kate covers the forearms wrapped around her abdomen and tilts her head, nose to his cheekbone. "I'm hungry too."

He huffs, but her stomach growls beneath his arms in warning, tugging the smile wider across his lips.

"Okay, okay," he murmurs, turning to steal a kiss from her mouth. She hums, thoroughly appreciating the warmth of his lips, the sneaking stroke of his tongue, and taking her time in letting him pull away. Her chest is light, butterflies inside her sternum, by the time he eases her back down to the chair. "Thank you, by the way. For being so good with her."

Kate shakes her head, shifting in the wheelchair until she's comfortable. "Like I said, I knew where she was coming from, Castle."

"Still not right, how she was acting, but I knew she'd come around," he muses, taking the back of her chair in his hands. She lets him this time, normally preferring to do all the work herself, but she relaxes tonight, allows Castle to wheel her towards the door. "You're pretty loveable."

Her instinct is to argue, but in that moment, despite the wheelchair, the loss of her legs, the overwhelming prospect of Christmas Eve with his family - the fact that Richard Castle loves her is all she needs for Christmas.

"Love you too, Castle."

* * *

After dessert and the Castle Christmas tradition of changing into Christmas themed pajamas and opening a single present each for Christmas Eve, Castle carries her to the couch. He set up the projector screen in the living room, put on Alexis's favorite Christmas movie, and settled between her and his daughter on the sofa for the rest of the evening. Before she lived her, got to know him and his family so intimately, she would have expected Christmases at the loft to be doused in extravagance, but while the decorations were grand and the traditions plentiful, she's learned that if anything, Christmases here were only about one thing.

All that mattered tonight was family and she was a part of that now.

It's just past midnight and his mother and daughter have retired to their rooms, soft smiles still on their faces, and Kate feels more content than she has in months, spooning with him on the couch while another movie plays on.

"Thank you again, Rick," she murmurs, stroking her thumb over the bracelet he got her, leather bound and strung with gold skulls. She has no idea how he caught onto her style of jewelry so quickly, how he knew better than to get her diamonds or expensive karats, how he knows what she wants better than any other man ever has.

His lips brush the back of her neck and she swears it sends a shiver down her spine that reaches even the paralyzed parts of her. "It's just a bracelet, love."

"No, it's not," she argues, curling her arm to her chest. "It's beautiful. Normal."

"Normal?" he echoes, curious and amused.

"I was kinda worried that any gifts for me might revolve around my - disability," she admits, feeling his arm tighten around her waist.

"Didn't even cross my mind, Kate. You're more than what happened to you, more than your paralysis, your limits." He shifts at her back, his lips caressing her uncovered shoulder.

He and Alexis both changed into matching pajamas earlier, a red and green flannel set that he bought for her as well. Martha opted out of the tradition, sticking with her silk robes and vibrant shades, but Kate let him help her into the plaid bottoms. She's already shrugged out of the button up top in favor of a camisole, though, grateful for the decision now as the warmth of Castle's mouth touches her bare skin.

"That'll never define you," he adds, the promise in his voice wrapping around her heart. "Not to me."

Kate sighs and finds one of his hands at her ribs, drawing it up to her lips and nuzzling his knuckles.

"I want to sleep out here tonight," she mumbles, twisting on her side to face him, nudging him with her hips.

He takes the hint, slides one of his knees between hers, reaches down to hook her leg a little higher at his thigh.

"On the couch?" he chuckles, but his arms are twining around her, fitting her impossibly deeper into the cove of his body and turning her back on the projector screen.

But she's barely been paying attention to the film in the first place, drifting in the cocoon of his arms and the sinfully soft throw blanket he draped over them both.

She never imagined what Christmas would be like with him before, never would have thought they would actually spend one together before her shooting. But she imagines this is what it would have been like no matter the circumstances that brought them here, it's how she imagines Christmases with him in the future.

"By the tree," she murmurs, snaking a hand between them to trace the sparkle of lights illuminating the side of his face, twinkling and golden. "I don't want to go to bed-"

"Beckett, please refrain from using such terrifying phrases."

Kate rolls her eyes and flicks his ear. "I don't want the night to end," she clarifies, stroking her thumb to his chin, below his bottom lip. "This is the first time I've enjoyed an actual Christmas since my mom died." The confession has the amusement slipping from his features, reverence rushing to replace it. "She would have loved how you guys do Christmas."

"She would have liked me?" Castle asks, but he isn't teasing, the Christmas lights reflecting the intrigue in his eyes. The hope.

"She would have loved you," she says with certainty, trailing her fingers down to his chest, over his heart. Oh, her mom would have adored him, would have badgered Kate into getting with him long before a bullet finally brought them together. "I love you too."

"I know," he murmurs, slipping his hand beneath her shirt and dragging his palm up her damaged spine. "Always love you, Kate."

She tucks her head below his chin, presses her nose to the warm hollow of his throat, and closes her eyes. She believes him.


	6. Dusk Till Dawn

_Chapter 6: Dusk Till Dawn_

 _When Beckett is shot in 'Knockout', she wakes up in another world where Castle successfully jumped in front of her to take the bullet and has been declared dead. But his ghost isn't._

 _Kate wakes once more to the 'real' world, where Castle is very much alive, but her life with his ghost isn't so easily forgotten._ _This chapter takes place during the first Christmas that follows these events._

* * *

She's already up and getting ready for work when the knocking on her front door has her pausing in front of her closet. Kate's lips quirk, because there's no question to who it is, and she drops the pair of boots she was contemplating to let him in.

She opens the front door to his crooked smile and bright blue eyes, a cup of coffee already extended towards her. "Merry Christmas Eve-Eve, Beckett."

Kate rolls her eyes, but accepts the cup from his hand.

"You know that's not a real thing," she points out as he strides inside.

Castle pauses to press a kiss to her cheek. "Sure it is. It's the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, hence Christmas Eve- _Eve_."

She sighs, but catches him by a belt loop before he can slip past her. He arches an eyebrow, but stops without pause, some of the smart ass teasing dissipating from his gaze as she uses her grip to draw him in.

Kate tilts her head to reach his mouth, fingers still curled in the loop of fabric. His chest stutters just slightly against hers, but then he's cradling her cheek in his palm, wrapping his arm around her waist, and humming into her kiss.

She's noticed that moments like these still seem to take him off guard. He loves her, she loves him, and she's shown him, many times. But each time she initiates contact, whether it be a simple morning kiss in her foyer or her body sliding over him in bed, she can taste the soft awe on his tongue, see it in his eyes every time.

Castle's hand steals beneath her sweater, knuckles caressing her lower back, coaxing her spine to arc like a puppet on a string for him.

She grunts, the scar lining her side searing.

"Hurting?" he mumbles, because of course he already knows, fingers already traipsing across her skin to linger below her ribs, smooth over the incision scar marring her flesh. Kate pins her bottom lip with her teeth and nods.

The cold weather has become her worst enemy, stretching her still healing skin, causing it to ache and pull. Her only relief comes from him, his hands on her body after a case, after he comes home with her or she joins him and his family at the loft - an event she still has to sometimes steel herself for. Alexis may not be seeking vengeance for her dead father in their current world, but her weariness of Kate fails to lessen. She doesn't blame his daughter, she would be weary too if her dad was seeing the woman who managed to get him shot.

But she can't let him go despite every instinct that tells her she should, that screams for his safety and for her to retreat to lonely hiding places behind a wall that he's been inside of for months now. She dreamt in vivid detail of what it would be like to have him and now that she does, she won't waste another day.

His palm splays over her scar, warm and soothing, and she hums, nudges her nose to his jaw.

"We should play hooky from work today," he murmurs, tracing his thumb back and forth over the bottom rung of her ribcage. "Curl up in bed and binge Christmas movies."

"Mm, not a big fan of Christmas movies, but don't tempt me," she grins, dislodging her lips from his skin with a sigh. "Have to work today if I want Christmas morning with you."

His lips twitch with a smile, tender and lovely and calling for one last brush of her mouth before she finally pulls away.

Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have dreamed of altering her normal Christmas tradition of keeping watch over the city. But after experiencing the idea of a Christmas with Castle, waking with warmth in her chest that melted away the chilling ache in her heart, she opted to compromise.

She's still working her usual holiday shift on Christmas Eve, on Christmas day as well, but she won't go in until noon, just enough time for her to stop by the loft on Christmas morning without intruding on his family's traditions.

Castle drifts to her kitchen, finding a spot on one of her barstools while she follows.

"You said we spent Christmas together in the dreamworld, right?"

Kate pauses, the cup of coffee poised at her lips. They don't talk about 'the dreamworld' very often anymore, he knows every detail she was able to remember, but every once in a while, he takes her off guard with a new question.

"We did," she confirms, taking a sip of the coffee, wrinkling her nose at the spike of peppermint. "Castle, did you order a Christmas blend?"

"It's peppermint mocha," he grins and she huffs, disgruntled by the change from her favored vanilla, but returning the cup to her lips nonetheless.

"What'd we do for Christmas there?"

She never planned to tell him, intending to keep the memories to herself, but it eventually became unavoidable.

The idea of spending a summer healing at her dad's cabin after her release from the hospital was just too similar, too much too soon, so when Castle offered her a place of solitude in the Hamptons, she didn't say no. But the foreign place failed to stop the nightmares from finding her - dreams that started the same as her life in the other world with his ghost did, only this time, he was really dead.

Her sobs woke him up every time, calling him down the stairs to her room in the middle of the night. He would sit with her in the dark, consoling until she was truly able to believe he was real, alive. Not a ghost.

"A ghost?" he murmured one night, sitting beside her in the bed with a tentative arm around her shoulders. Still so tentative with her then. A strange contrast after months of having him love her without boundary or restriction, no tentative touches.

She curled into his side, her cheek at his clavicle. He loved her, she loved him back, but aside from a chaste kiss in the hospital, he was careful with her. Too careful.

"Being a ghost does sound pretty cool, though," he mused, circling his thumb over the rounded edge of her shoulder.

"It isn't," she breathed, immediately feeling his confusion permeate the air.

She was afraid to tell him initially, acutely aware of exactly how crazy it sounded, still sounds - she woke up in an supernatural sort of reality where he was dead yet not, a ghost who remained by her side for nearly a year that was really just a few days worth of sleep. But Castle was enraptured from the moment she uttered her memory of waking up to news of his death, to her first encounter with his ghost in the cabin.

Kate lowers her cup to the wooden surface of her countertop.

"Well, I wanted you to spend it with Martha and Alexis, so you went there for Christmas Eve," she recalls, tracing the rim of the mug with her thumb. "But you came back sometime after midnight, spent Christmas night, the day, with me."

Castle nods, but he's staring down at his hands fidgeting in his lap.

"Why?" she inquires, earning the lift of his eyes, a forced smile.

"Just curious," he answers automatically, but Kate narrows her gaze on him. Asking about her dream usually _is_ prompted by pure curiosity and intrigue, but he never appears crestfallen by the answers he receives. Not like he does now.

He eventually breaks under her stare, sighing in defeat, but refusing to meet her eyes.

"I want your Christmas with me to be as good as your Christmas with him."

" _Him_?"

Castle swallows, his jaw squaring before he speaks. "The other me."

Kate blinks before she shakes her head at the absurdity of the statement, abandoning her coffee to circle the bar. He's sitting on the stool, looking like a rejected little boy, beaten out by his own self, and it's just - all wrong.

"Castle," she murmurs, nudging her way between his knees and lifting her hands to his cheeks. "You are _him_. It was a dream-"

"Alternate reality," he grumbles, but his hands still reach out, claim her hips.

"But it wasn't reality, not _my_ reality," she insists. "I loved having you then, but I have you now and it's - god, Castle, it's even better."

Her hands slip from his cheeks while she drifts in to drop her forehead to his, palms falling to rest at his chest.

"You died in that dream, alternate world, whatever you want to call it," she murmurs, pressing the heel of her palm to his beating heart, curling her fingers over the spot. "We were never able to truly be happy because every piece of joy was mixed with... so much sorrow," she confesses, able to recall the feeling as if it were real, as if it really did inhabit her for those days of dreaming, those months of an imaginary life. "Here, I woke up and you were fine, for the most part."

Her fingers skim over the healed scar on his arm, just below his shoulder where the bullet seared through him as he tried to save her.

"But I would never give up that dream."

A hint of hurt flares through his gaze, but she doesn't allow him the room for questions, for assumptions. Kate leans forward, her forehead grazing his in a kiss before finding rest there.

"Rick, that dream showed me what waiting can cost. It taught me that if I loved you, I should let you know while I can, that I should stop fighting it or else I'm just going to end up losing you, regretting every moment I could have had with you."

"Kate," he whispers, his hands retracting from her waist to curl around her wrists. He's hanging on her every word, but the truth of how close it came to her 'what if's being a reality aren't lost on him. His grip is firm on her bones, his thumbs sealing to the insides of her wrists where her pulse skips for him.

"That dream showed me how much you mean to me," she finishes softly, sliding one of her hands up from his chest to his throat, touching her fingertips to the reassuring thunder of his life beating beneath. "It led me here. Why would I ever want anything else?"

* * *

Kate startles awake at the sound of her front door unlocking the next night. She's never been a light sleeper to begin with, but after her shooting, the bouts of PTSD she's experienced, any little noise yanks her violently from slumber. Not that she intended to fall into a deep sleep tonight anyway; she was hoping he would come.

She checks her phone on the nightstand. It's mere minutes after midnight, officially Christmas, and he knows where she hides the extra key to her apartment. It reaffirms her suspicions, her hopes.

He slips effortlessly into her bedroom, easing the door shut behind him and attempting silence on the tips of his toes to reach her. But she's watching, grinning beneath the sheets, and he must feel her eyes on him.

Castle huffs, pausing halfway through and giving up any pretense of sneaking into her bed. "You're supposed to be sleeping."

She hums, watches him unbutton his shirt and step out of his jeans. She draws back the sheets on the side of the bed that has become his, catching the smile that flickers across his lips at the gesture, glad for it. She wants him to feel certain, to know his place here, to trust that she's firmly here with him. Only him.

"So should you," she counters, shifting as he settles under the covers and snuggles in close to her.

The cold clings to him, his nose red and his hair damp with flakes of snow, and Kate shivers as he tangles himself around her. But she welcomes the embrace of his body, snaking her arms around his torso and pushing a knee between his.

"Had to see you," he murmurs, painting his lips to her cheek. "Want to wake up next to you on Christmas morning."

Her heart flutters in her chest, a pleasant sensation that tickles her ribcage, that only he has ever been able to evoke. The thrill of being in love with him.

It's different than what she felt for him in the dream. It's better.

"I was waiting for you," she admits, pressing her lips to his jaw, letting them curl against his skin. "Had a feeling you might show up. Trying to compete with yourself."

"I am not," he mutters despite her smirk, sliding his cold hands beneath her shirt and grinning as she gasps.

"Asshole," she grunts, pinching his side.

"I don't have to compete with anyone for you," he murmurs, catching the corner of her mouth for a kiss. She arches an eyebrow, but oh - he's teasing the edge of her lips with the fleeting touch of his tongue, the nip of his teeth. "You gave me one of the best gifts for Christmas yesterday, Kate."

His hands are warming along her spine, heating the sensitive skin of her scars, and she rocks her body deeper into his, hums in question.

"What was that?"

One of Castle's hands manages to coast the length of her vertebrae, up to curve at the nape of her neck, fingers in her hair.

"Reassurance," he mumbles into her chasing lips. "You told me how much you loved me-"

"Told you that before," she argues halfheartedly, slipping her arms from between them to submerge her fingers in his hair, drag him closer. "Stop questioning that."

"I know, but-" She huffs, stops trying to shut him up with her mouth even though all she wants for Christmas is for him to stop talking. Castle grins at her impatience, nuzzling his nose to hers despite it. "I never questioned it, I just - I needed to hear it. All of it."

The urgency swirling through her blood simmers from its needful boil, popping and sizzling and molten in her stomach, but she puts it all on hold to dust her lips over his.

"Not even the best dream could ever compare to this, Castle. Whenever you need to be reminded of that, let me know."

He smiles into her kiss and finally - _finally_ \- shifts, fits his hips against hers in that perfect way that sets her soul on fire.

"I could use some extra reminding," he muses, gasping as her hand dips below the waistband of his boxers.

"Gladly. Merry Christmas, Castle," she grins, laughing as he smothers her mouth with a kiss, always managing to bring joy into her bed on even the most joyless nights.

"Best Christmas yet," he hums, gentling the work of his mouth over hers into a slow caress that steals her breath.

Kate welcomes the cove of his body over hers, the warm haven she arches into as her heart begins to pound with anticipation, desire, love. She loves him in a way that is both familiar and new, terrifying and beautiful, and no, nothing really could ever compare to the way she feels right now.

"Mine too."


	7. Trading Heartbeats

_Chapter 7: Trading Heartbeats_

 _In this story, the roles are reversed, with Beckett as the famous mystery writer and Castle as the homicide detective. This chapter is how they spend their first Christmas together._

* * *

"You don't have to stay here with me."

Kate glances up from the chair beside his desk, blinking a couple of times before the haze of her writing dissipates, allows her to see him clearly. She's been sitting there for over an hour, filling page after page in that moleskin that never leaves her side; he's surprised her hand hasn't cramped up, makes a mental reminder to rub his thumb to that spot along her wrist that always aches with overuse later.

"What?" she murmurs, lowering the pen to the paper and offering him her full attention.

"It's Christmas," Castle murmurs, glancing to the garland and gold lights she strung along his desk last week for emphasis. "You shouldn't be stuck in a police station for it."

"Where else would I be?" she shrugs, looking so genuinely content to waste the most wonderful time of the year the same way she wastes every other day - stationed next to him in the Twelfth precinct.

But is it really a waste if she appears so proud to show up at his side every day?

"I actually don't know," he muses, shifting away from the paperwork that's been consuming his evening.

They had a case this morning, a man in a reindeer suit run over by a vengeful elf in a stolen Santa sleigh uptown, a sight neither of them will be forgetting any time soon. It wasn't hard to find the guilty elf before she could skip town, getting a confession by nightfall. He expected Kate to cut out after that. They've been together for over a year now, the best year he's had since he lost the only thing that mattered to him. They've healed from the twin gunshot wounds together, have formed routines, and he's over at her loft more often than he would like to admit. He practically lives with her at this point. But there are still many facets to Kate Beckett that he has yet to dig into, to learn.

"I figured you might do something with your dad today, have a special tradition of some sort."

A shadow crosses her face, brief but dark, and he almost regrets asking.

Almost.

"Christmas doesn't mean the same thing to me and my dad that it used to," she begins to explain, closing her notebook, hooking her pen in its slot alongside the leather. He waits, watching her fingers take their time, smoothing over the face of the notebook she carries everywhere they go, gathering herself, her words. "Every winter, as soon as that chill rolls in, I'm right back there in that alley. January 9th and our Christmas decorations were still up. My mom was never in any rush to take them down. "

Immediately, he understands, her lack of enthusiasm for the holidays resonating so strongly with him, it's like a physical strike to his gut. He's never met someone else whose existing joy for Christmas was extinguished so wholly by grief.

"And by the time my dad and I did, it was like we were putting Christmas away forever." She rubs her thumb along the corner of her notebook. "We haven't opened those boxes since."

"Neither have I," he says without thinking.

Kate's gaze rises, flickering with curiosity, but ultimately, with knowledge. She probably had him, his lack of traditions, all figured out before she even got here, before Christmas and the chill of its memories even rolled in. And here he was, having to listen to her spell it out, making her expose another jagged piece of her heart that was sharpened by grief nearly twelve years ago because he didn't take the time to even think about what this day might mean to her. Too busy trying not to think at all.

Christmas was Alexis's favorite.

"Alexis wanted us to keep our decorations up for as long as possible. I didn't end up packing them away until late January, only a few weeks before she was killed," Castle admits, the memory of his little girl's sheer joy every year during Christmas time clear and like a puncture wound to his heart.

Kate reaches out, drapes her palm at his knee, brings him back.

"It's why you don't celebrate," she concludes, the empathy in her eyes a balm to his soul. She makes it easy to spill his guts when she looks at him like that.

Rick slides his hand over hers, tangles their fingers, and rolls his chair closer, close enough to draw her hand to his chest without stretching her arm so far. The scar in her back, where the bullet penetrated, shredded her muscles and shattered bone, has been aching lately. It has to be the weather, the dropping temperatures that have him aware of the lancing pain through his chest where his own scar lies. But the aggravation in Kate's was so fierce, she spent the beginning of December curled in bed instead of writing, the drape of his chest at her back, sealed over the spot with heat, tending to be her only comfort.

Her knuckles fall to rest over his heart. "Why neither of us celebrate."

Kate nods, studying the knot of their hands.

"It's why every year my dad goes up to his cabin and I - I just try to treat it like any other day, get through it," she murmurs, curling her thumb around his. "No traditions. Not anymore."

"This is my tradition," Castle says, casting his gaze across the empty bullpen. "There are families out there that are celebrating together in their homes and I keep watch. It's the only tradition I have left."

"Thanks for letting me be a part of it." His eyes flicker back to Kate, the smile kissing the corner of her mouth soft, grateful.

"I want traditions with you," he blurts out, kicking himself for it, for the way her eyebrows rise. "I mean - I - you know I love you."

Amusement twitches across her lips. "I do."

"And I know that Christmas will never be the same, for either of us, but - Alexis loved it, your mom loved it, and I'd like to believe that they would want us to enjoy it again. Together."

Her lips part, wordless for a moment, before the question slips past. "You think so?"

"Kate, I... I plan to spend a lot more Christmases with you," he admits, watching it ripple across her face. She doesn't expect him to be so sure of her, of them, not when she was the one who spent most of their relationship fighting so hard for them. But it's his turn now. "And I don't want us to have to tiptoe around the parts of it that hurt every year. I want it to mean something again."

"Look at you," she chuckles, but her eyes give her away, glittering. "Being the romantic one."

He scoffs. "What are you talking about? I'm always romantic for you, woman."

Kate chokes on a laugh and stands from her chair, dropping her notebook into the abandoned seat and drawing him up after her.

"Come on then, Romeo. Take a coffee break," she coaxes, but his body is already following hers out of instinct. He'll always follow her, whether he wants to or not, it's something he's grown to accept.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

"And I want the same thing," she adds while they walk to the break room, her fingers twining through his. "For Christmas to be something I can enjoy with you."

"I know it's too late to do anything this year," he sighs, but Kate squeezes his hand, slows to a stop in front of the espresso machine.

"We are doing something, we're here. Keeping watch."

Oh, he loves her. So badly wants to be enough for her, wants to be more for her. Wants more for them both.

Castle slides his hand from hers to frame her hips with his palms, inching his fingers beneath the luxurious fabric of her sweater, a rich purple cashmere he watched her slip on this morning. He's so used to her sharp lines, sensuous edges, but she looks softer like this, a little younger, a little less versed in how cruel the world can be.

"Want to take a break from keeping watch and take a walk with me?"

His palms splay at her ribs, her skin warm and shivering beneath his.

"Okay, but I still want coffee, Castle," she bargains, layering her palms at his biceps. "I'm cold."

"Oh, Beckett," he chuckles, her ribs stuttering into his hands with a breath as he leans in, his lips brushing hers as he speaks. "I'll make sure you stay warm."

* * *

Christmas Eve in Manhattan is breathtaking. It's been so long since he's spared a moment in the last thirteen years to appreciate the beauty of it - the lights twinkling from nearly every building, illuminating every street, the impressive Christmas trees on practically every corner, the decorations spanning from unique to classic. It's magical, especially with Kate Beckett's hand wrapped in his, her body tucked into his side as they stroll down the sidewalk.

"I want a tree next year," she murmurs, her cheek on his shoulder. She's gazing at the majestic tree beneath the arch of Washington Square Park where they ended up. "A small one."

"A real one?" he inquires, massaging the bone of her wrist in his coat pocket.

"Mm, I love the smell."

"Is it worth the post pine needle clean up?"

She smirks. "Always something for you to whine about."

Castle presses his lips to her hair, damp with flakes of snow. "Alexis and I used to drive up to this tree farm about an hour from here, close to Connecticut. I obviously haven't been there since, but one year, when she was around six, we showed up late and all the best trees were gone. I never knew a Christmas tree farm could run out of trees."

"What did you do?" she asks, because she knows he had to do something. Could never let his daughter be disappointed for long.

"Well, all that was left were these scraggly little excuses for Christmas trees that looked like sticks with some pine needles stuck to them. Charlie Brown trees."

Kate hums. "I like those. They're cute, charming."

"Yeah? Well, so did my daughter."

"Oh no," she grins, her cheek rising against his shoulder.

"We ended up taking home a four foot, half naked, baby of a tree, but Alexis loved it." His lips quirk at the memory. "We decided she could keep it in her room and I would go find a better tree for the main one. We spent that entire night stringing it up with a single cord of lights and her favorite ornaments, putting a star on top. She cried when we had to throw it out after Christmas."

Kate sighs and lists heavier into his side. "That's sweet. Did you... are there any pictures?"

He glances down to her, hesitant and a little hopeful, and he realizes in slight horror that aside from the few framed photos he's kept on display in his apartment, he's never shown her any pictures from his past, the parts of his life he was actually proud of, all his pictures of Alexis.

"They're all put away in a box, but I know I have to have some of her with that tree," he confirms. "I could show you tomorrow."

"I'd like that," she nods, letting him pull her into his chest for a hug. "I'd like it if we could see your mom too."

He sighs, should've known that was coming. It's still hard for him sometimes, spending days with his mother, but Kate was always pushing him to see her more, to appreciate the time he has with her. Martha is winning in her fight against the cancer, her chances for remission high, but he can't rely on that, can't just expect his mother to live forever and take their time together for granted.

"I'll call her in the morning," Rick murmurs, earning the flicker of pride in her gaze. "I'm sure she'd love to do something for lunch, maybe a Christmas dinner. She used to be so great about those, making them as magical as possible even when it was just the two of us in a tiny one bedroom apartment."

Kate's smile softens. "Let's go home, you can tell me about those Christmases on the way."

She laces her arms around his waist, the front of her body sealing against his as her head tilts back just slightly to meet his gaze. Snowflakes catch in her lashes, but she doesn't blink them away, staring up at him with those liquid gold eyes, white crystals in her hair - the image of all he could want for Christmas.

"Our stuff's at the precinct," he points out, feeling her hands slip beneath his coat, bridge at the base of his spine.

"Just my notebook and your paperwork," she murmurs, one of her shoulders lifting in a halfhearted shrug. "I'm done writing for tonight anyway and your shift is over."

His chest tightens, his scar screwing up. He wants to, wants to follow her home like he does every night, forget about work and murder and in this case, the bittersweet taste of Christmas. He wants bury himself in her instead. But he doesn't know how, hasn't left his station at the Twelfth on Christmas for years, typically opting to just spend the night at his desk or on the break room sofa.

"You told me you want new traditions. One of them should be getting some actual sleep for Christmas," she points out, only half teasing him. Her knuckles brush along his sides, soothing and warm. "Let yourself rest for a night, Rick."

He drops his forehead against her, feels her lashes flutter at his cheeks. He only finds rest in her.

"Only if you will," he compromises, scaling one of his hands up her back to curve at her nape. She's better at hiding it than he is and he may still have a lot to learn, but he knows her well enough to see how the memories have swarmed her, threaten to suffocate her. They both want Christmas, but tonight has been enough, enough for this year. "Let it rest, Kate."

She sighs, but her nose brushes his as she nods.

"Take me home then, Castle."

She keeps referring to her apartment as home. He no longer has the urge to correct her.

* * *

He doesn't set his alarm for the next morning, knowing his body will naturally wake him, but when he does open his eyes on Christmas morning, it's to empty sheets.

Castle sits up in her bed, searching the room with bleary eyes, but she isn't here. Unusual for her. Kate tends to enjoy lounging in the sheets with him on the rare lazy mornings they're able to share. He's a little disappointed; his only hope for Christmas after last night was for Kate to wake him with the gift of her body over his.

He stretches, spine popping, before he's untangling from the sheets they tangled in overnight. He snags his boxers from the floor, his robe from the armchair near the bedroom door, and pads down the short hallway to her living room. He doesn't have to look far to find her.

His heart flips.

"Kate," he whispers, earning the immediate lift of her head, the tentative quirk of her lips. She's curled up on the couch by the snow frosted windows in nothing but his dress shirt, her slim fingers cradling a cup of coffee, a scraggly Christmas tree that can't be more than five feet tall standing beside the sofa's arm.

Just like the one Alexis used to adore.

"Morning, babe," she murmurs, chewing on her bottom lip. "Is it too much?"

"Too much? It's a Charlie Brown tree," he chuckles, the constricting vise around his heart unfurling. It's just as pathetic as Alexis's little tree, but somehow, it fits well in her apartment, standing proudly in front of a window and framed by her favorite painting that claims the majority of the wall at its side. "Wait, where did you even get this? Don't tell me you went out and-"

"No," Kate shakes her head, a relieved smile playing across her lips. "I know a guy."

"You know a guy who delivers wannabe pine trees on Christmas morning?" he challenges, shuffling towards her and the tiny tree bare of decor.

"Said guy doesn't celebrate Christmas and owed me a favor anyway," she points out, watching him brush his fingers along one of the slim branches. "Want to decorate it?"

"We don't have..." But she's holding up a single box of classic round red ornaments when he glances back to her.

"We can make up a better collection for next year, but for now, I've got balls."

"Kate," he chokes, the laughter clogging his throat as her lips split with a grin, proud of herself for that one. "Fine, but there's another tradition I want to make first."

She arches an eyebrow in question, but knows exactly what he's talking about the second he turns away from the tree and towards her. The box of ornaments return to the coffee table along with her cup of coffee and Kate reaches for the edges of his robe once he's close enough.

"Hey," she murmurs before he can kiss her, looking up at him with a lot more than lust in her gaze. "I - it's been a long time since I didn't dread Christmas, Rick, so thank you. For making this feel so easy."

Castle shakes his head, bows it to rest against hers.

"And for the new traditions," she adds, caressing his jaw with the soft trail of her fingertips, tracing words and warmth onto his skin. He doesn't have enough words in return for her, never does, but he touches his lips to hers in a whisper of a kiss, feels his heart swell with it, pushing the truth from his mouth onto hers.

"You're the only new tradition I need."


	8. Pas de Deux

_Chapter 8: Pas de Deux_

 _Little Alexis Castle falls in love with dance while Rick Castle falls in love with her dance teacher. This chapter is set nearly a year into the future following the final chapter of the original story._

* * *

"I've never seen you so nervous." Kate meets his eyes in the dressing room mirror and the fluttering in her heart automatically calms. It's her first time seeing him today and he looks gorgeous in his tux, the red and green tie she's sure Alexis insisted he wear. Kate got ready at her apartment this morning instead of the loft, doing most of her hair and makeup in her bathroom; she needed the time alone, the space to concentrate, but it had her missing him as if she didn't spend the entire day before with him and his daughter, like always. "It's very cute, but why are you so nervous?"

"You're not supposed to be in here," she grumbles, smoothing down the tulle of her skirt, pressing her palm to the embroidered corset crushing her ribs.

Rick eases the door to the dressing room shut and starts towards her. "All your little ballerinas are waiting on you, including ours."

 _Ours._

Her lips quirk and she turns away from the mirror, allows him a full glimpse of her in costume.

"I talked to her and the rest of the girls before I came in here. Is she doing okay?" Kate murmurs, twining her hands in front of her, but Castle is distracted by the sight of her dressed like a mystical flower. "Castle."

"I can't determine if I should call you sexy or exquisite," he murmurs, stumbling through a few steps before he reaches her. The costume isn't elaborate, not like those in the elite performances of the ballet she and her class are dancing tonight, just a simple ivory ballet gown made to look ethereal, decorated with a slew of purple petals and green leaves sewn into the skirt, matching lavender flowers twined through the curls of her hair. Her girls look similar, their leotards varying shades of pastels, glittering skirts in the shapes of petals flowing from their tiny waists.

They're a small school of dance doing a single performance from the famous Nutcracker ballet, an adaptation of _Waltz of the Flowers_ , one of the few acts that doesn't require any male dancers; there was no reason for her to feel so anxious.

And yet she can't manage to quiet the nerves swarming her gut.

Castle skims his fingertips along the vines of flowers off her shoulders, along the corset that dips ever so slightly between her breasts.

"Rick," she calls, snaking her hands out from her sides to clutch the edges of his suit jacket. "Alexis."

"Looks like a beautiful little rosebud," he confirms, his throat working through a swallow as he tears his gaze away from the structured frame of the corset. "And is probably as nervous as you are. Which brings me back to my previous question, why are you so nervous?"

Kate snags her teeth with her bottom lip, earning the tap of his fingertip to her chin, a reminder that she's about to ruin the pink lipstick she just painted on.

"I just - I haven't done this in a while," she confesses. "Danced in front of other people, I mean."

"What are you talking about? You dance with your students every day-"

"With my students," she nods. "In a classroom, without an audience."

"Except for me," he adds with a smirk.

"Castle," she groans, amusing him further with her frustration. "It's just - this is the first time I've danced for a crowd in… since before my mom was murdered. I stopped after that, as soon as I graduated, and focused on being a teacher instead of a performer."

He softens with understanding, always understanding. "Why can't you be both?"

"Because it-" She lowers her eyes to the crisp green of his dress shirt, the snowflake pin Alexis told her she clipped to his lapel before they left the loft. "It feels wrong dancing without her in the audience, especially now. The Christmas performances... " Kate sighs, forces the shuddering in her chest to calm. " _The Nutcracker_ was her favorite."

His warm hands ascend to her elbows, his palms cradling the sharp juts of bone, his thumbs soothing at the edge of her tricep muscles.

"Kate, I've seen you dance," he murmurs, not at all fazed by her answer, like he already knew. Wouldn't surprise her. "I've seen you in that studio with my daughter more times than I can count." She lifts her eyes to him at that, finds him gazing back at her with so much adoration, she feels her skin flushing with it. "I'll never forget the first time, when you both danced without knowing I was there. It was… one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen."

"Rick," she whispers, but his hands travel up the length of her arms, scaling her biceps to cup her shoulders in his palms, brushing one of his thumbs to her exposed collarbones.

"You told me dancing helped you heal. I've been able to see that from the start, because you dance with passion, with all your soul, and it shows," he murmurs, his lips spreading with a smile. "And I know it's not the same, not even close, but just know that you have someone sitting in the audience for you, watching with enough pride to rival your mother's."

Kate laces her arms around his neck, elevating on the tips of her pointe ballet shoes to seal her cheek to his, and takes a deep breath before he really makes her cry.

"I wish she could have met you, Castle," she breathes, feeling his fingers traipse delicately across her back, stuttering over the silk straps lacing down her spine, unsure where to touch, before he gives in and simply wraps his arms around her. "You and Alexis - she would have loved you both so much."

"We would have loved her back," he says without doubt, his lips grazing her ear.

Kate sucks in a deep breath of his cologne, the clean scent of the laundry detergent they now share. It's been over a year, two semesters of teaching Alexis, since they met, since she promptly let him slip past walls that have kept others out for as long as she can remember. Her apartment is wasted space, collecting dust from her lack of living there; the man holding her now, whispering words of reassurance in her ear, and the little girl waiting for her backstage, have become her home.

"I love you," she murmurs, brushing her nose to his cheekbone, waiting for his head to turn, for his lips to find hers.

She sighs into his kiss, doesn't care that she'll have to fix her makeup before she steps out of the dressing room to join her team of dancers, who are jittery with just as many nerves as she is and waiting on her.

Castle cradles the harsh angle of her jaw, dusting his fingers down her throat and sending rivulets of electricity trickling through her veins.

"I love you too," he hums, parting from her lips with a soft breath, reluctant to let her go. "So go out there and dance from your heart, like you do with Alexis, like you do with me."

He wiggles his brow and Kate chokes on a laugh, stains it to his cheek. "You're a terrible dancer, babe."

"I try to give you confidence and this is what I get in return?" he scoffs, but he's grinning, skating his hands down her sides to skim over the sheer material of her skirt. "But if that's true, you should give me some lessons later, preferably while still wearing this."

"Mm, find a nutcracker costume," she muses, nipping once at his bottom lip before pulling away. "And we'll talk."

* * *

The dance goes well, as seamless as Kate could have hoped for. Her troup's practice pays off, each of her seven girls nailing the choreography without misstep, each mini solo flowing flawlessly into the next. And with Alexis performing alongside her, Rick's bright eyes in the crowd every time hers strayed to the seats below, Kate dances with more enthusiasm than she has in years. Enough to make her wish those minutes on the stage would never end.

But once it does and the applause fills the concert hall, she leads her group of flowers behind the curtain, ushering them to the dressing room and praising each of them for a beautiful job. The girls buzz with excitement, the thrill of a perfect performance, chattering amongst one another until parents begin to filter in, locating their kid before they come to Kate.

She congratulates each child once more and spares a few extra minutes to talk with each mother, discussing resuming class schedules for the new year, payment plans, the usual parts of her business that sometimes grow tiresome. But after her final conversation concludes, she's able to seek out her most talented student, always saving her praise for the girl who has become both a protege and the closest thing to a daughter that Kate could ever imagine for last.

She spies Alexis's fiery red bun across the room, waiting patiently by the vanity where Kate's belongings sit. Alone.

Huh, where was Castle?

Kate starts towards her, eager to steal his daughter's seat and unwrap the ribbons of her pointe shoes, slip them from her aching feet. Even more eager to see Alexis's smile.

"Hey you," she grins, instantly gaining Alexis's attention. The girl pops up from the chair, bare feet free of her ballet shoes, but she bounces on her toes anyway once she reaches Kate.

Alexis throws her arms around her teacher's waist, smiling up at her as Kate cups the round apple of her cheek. "You were perfect."

"Really?" Alexis whispers and Kate can't help rolling her eyes.

"Yes, really. You should have seen how you executed those turns," she grins, adjusting Alexis's slim crown of flowers, knowing Castle will be itching to take pictures before they change back into their street clothes. "You did an amazing job and I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks, Mom," Alexis beams, her face exuberant with light until her own words register. She immediately pulls back, slapping a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry-"

"Alexis," Kate murmurs, catching the girl by the hips, the heels of her hands grazing the fabric of her tutu. Even though her heart may have skipped a beat too. "It's okay."

Alexis lowers her hand but chews on her bottom lip, a terrible habit Kate is totally responsible for.

"But I - you're not my mom," Alexis whispers and Kate hates how much that stings. "I wish you were, but I know you're not and I don't want to call you that if you don't want-"

"Alexis," she says again, squeezing her small waist once more before letting go, stealing one of her fidgeting hands instead. She moves around his daughter, her student, to take a seat on the chair in front of the vanity, her feet singing out in relief. Alexis shuffles forward, led by the gentle tug of Kate's hand around hers. "I love you like you're my own and you already know I would never try to take your real mom's place, so it's-"

"You love me?" Alexis whispers, her blue eyes brilliant against the soft pinks and vibrant gold of her costume.

"Of course I love you, silly," she whispers back, watching Alexis's lips spread with awe, both beautiful and heartbreaking. "I love you and your dad."

"Because we're a family?" Alexis asks, afraid to hope for it, she knows. Because Alexis has told her plenty of times just how badly she wants it, a real family, the one her mother robbed her of.

Well, Meredith's loss, Kate's gain.

"Yeah," Kate confirms. "You're definitely my family, Lex."

"Then can I - is it okay if I call you that? Mom?"

Kate's heart stutters again. She never imagined herself as someone who would hold that title, not until Castle, not until this moment with Alexis. She isn't sure what to say, isn't sure if she needs his approval on this, but… surely he would be okay with it, wouldn't object to his daughter referring to her as a second mother?

She doesn't have the time to go find him, to determine if it's right or wrong; his daughter is staring back at her with bated breath, waiting for an answer.

"You can call me whatever you want," she nods, watching Alexis's lips unfurl into that toothy, rosy cheeked smile. The one that showed her joy on full display.

"Thanks, Mom," she repeats, lacing her arms around Kate's neck just as the door swings open.

" _What_ did my daughter just call that woman?"

Kate stiffens in the same moment Alexis does, the little girl's head jerking over her shoulder to find a woman with vibrant red hair and a fur coat standing furious in the doorway. Castle is quickly striding in behind, leftover fury of his own in his eyes. But the damage is already done.

This must be Meredith.

* * *

"How about we all step outside for a second?" Castle suggests, his lips pursed into a thin line, the square of his jaw sharp and barely controlled.

Wow, she doesn't think she's ever seen him this angry.

"How about you tell me why Alexis is calling this - this - what are you? A sugar plum fairy? Why is Alexis calling her that?" Meredith demands, every shrill word tightening the tension coiling around Alexis's spine under Kate's hand.

"Maybe because she's more of a mother to her than you ever were," Castle bites out under his breath.

"Take that back," Meredith snarls, spinning on the spike of her stiletto. "Right now, Richard, or I swear-"

"Kate," Alexis whispers, turning to her with tears in her eyes, and no. No, she will not let this woman ruin Alexis's big night. Sure as hell not during Christmas.

"It's okay," Kate promises, rubbing her hand up the girl's back before lifting her eyes to the two parents arguing in whispers a few feet away. Kate clears her throat, earning both their attentions, an irritated scowl from Meredith, a look of remorse from Rick. "Meredith, my name is Kate Beckett. I'm Alexis's dance teacher and Rick's girlfriend."

"Oh, I get it," Meredith laughs, a bitter chuckle that is still somehow light, distastefully airy. "You're playing house while Lexi is in this whole dance phase. That's so cute."

"It's not a phase, Meredith," Castle snaps. "She's been dancing for over a year now. She's _good_ at it."

"My most promising student, actually," Kate adds, squeezing Alexis's waist as his daughter shifts a little deeper into her side. "Tonight's performance was her best yet."

"Oh, I'm sure it was and I'm so sorry I missed it, honey," Meredith cooes, finally directing her attention to the daughter she failed to acknowledge before. "But my flight was late. You understand."

Alexis nods, dropping her gaze to one of the flowers on Kate's skirt. "It's okay."

"See, Alexis doesn't mind and besides, I'm going to make it up to her. I made us a reservation at this fabulous new place that just opened up on the upper west side, so we can have dinner, dessert, and then-"

"No," Alexis blurts, her cheeks flaming as her eyes rise to meet Meredith's furrowed brow. "I - Daddy and Kate, we have our after recital tradition."

"A tradition?" Meredith deadpans, but Alexis stands a little straighter, fists one of her hands in the petals of her skirt.

"We go out for ice cream every time and tonight, we were going to see the Christmas lights and - and Kate got us tickets to the _real_ Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet for tomorrow."

Castle's brow rises, because yeah, ticket prices are high and she may have let the surprise slip to Alexis before she told him, but he doesn't look upset by the idea. If anything, he appears impressed, touched by it beneath the frustration simmering in his features.

But Alexis isn't done, her entire frame shaking, but her voice growing stronger despite its stutter.

"Because she knows it's my dream to be a professional dancer someday and you don't, Mom. I - I love you, but you're never _here_ and I - I want to spend time with you too, but - but you can't just take away my time with Kate and Daddy. I train hard for my recitals and I look forward to them, to our tradition, it's my favorite part of the year."

Alexis lets out a shaking breath, tears trembling on the rims of her eyes.

Meredith blinks. "I - I see."

"I'm sorry, Mom," Alexis whispers, swallowing hard. "I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, but you - you always hurt mine and you never even care."

"That's not true," Meredith protests and Kate bites her lip. She's never been the woman's biggest fan, not after witnessing her let down Alexis time and time again, but she won't intervene. No matter how badly she wants to. "I do _care_ , Alexis, I love you, sweetie. I just - it's so hard with my work, being so far away in LA. If you lived with me, you know I'd see you all the time."

Castle's chest puffs with quiet rage and Kate snags his gaze, stops it with an indiscernible shake of her head. Alexis isn't going anywhere. Legalities and custody battles aside, his daughter doesn't _want_ to go anywhere.

"Meredith," Kate addresses her with a deep breath, releasing Alexis's hip before rising to her feet. She isn't able to go far, not with her dance shoes still on, but she assumes she has a better chance at a civil conversation with the other woman while she isn't holding Alexis in front of her. "You flew all this way to see Alexis, so you must care about her, something I think all three of us have in common."

Some of the icy jealousy in Meredith's eyes simmers, melts. She's listening at least.

"And I'm sure you must be exhausted after a day of travel-"

"You have no idea," Meredith huffs, flipping her red hair over her shoulder. "My flight over was hell and I'm just so jetlagged."

Castle rolls his eyes and Kate does her best to ignore him, trying not to give way to the amusement aching to tug at her lips.

"Alexis and I are pretty worn out after the recital tonight too and I can't get another ticket for the ballet tomorrow, but I was going to take these two out to dinner afterwards. Why don't you join us?"

Rick glares at her from over Meredith's shoulder, but his ex wife is looking at her with a little less resentment and Alexis is radiating relief from beside her. He must notice, some of the fight draining from his shoulders, propelling him forward with a deep breath instead.

"Would you like that, Alexis?" he murmurs, easing past Meredith to approach the two of them, descending to his haunches in front of his daughter.

Alexis's lips quirk. "Yeah."

"Well, it's settled then," Meredith declares, adjusting her coat. "Lexi, sweetie, I'll see you tomorrow?"

Alexis meets her mother's pleased smile, patience like an adult dealing with a child in the ten year old's eyes, and nods. "See you tomorrow, Mom."

And just like that, Meredith is pivoting on her heel as if nothing happened, without hugging her daughter despite it being the first time Meredith is seeing her in over a year, without congratulating her for the dance recital she missed, without a care in the world.

"I'm sorry, Alexis," Castle sighs, snagging Kate's attention as well. "I didn't mean to argue with your mom in front of you like that."

She watches Alexis wrap her arms around Castle's neck. "It's okay, Daddy. You were just upset she showed up without calling again and missed another recital."

Rick sighs, but nods his head, hooking an arm around Alexis's shoulders.

"Upset she missed your recital and upset about how she talked to Kate," he admits, sparing a glance in her direction, but Kate is shifting away from the two, giving them the necessary moment while she bends to unlace her shoes.

"I didn't like that either," Alexis confesses, drawing back to smooth her hands down the glittering petals of her skirt. "I call Kate 'Mom' now."

Kate releases a soft laugh, but Rick is beaming as bright as Alexis was when she gave the girl her permission.

"I heard."

"You weren't the only one," Kate murmurs, finally slipping one of the pointe shoes from her foot, grunting as the torn blister on her heel is exposed to the cool air.

But Alexis is anxiously regaining Castle's gaze. "That's okay, right? Because I asked Kate and she said it was okay. I mean, I know she's not my actual mom, but I love her like she is and she loves me too, so-"

"Yes, Alexis," he chuckles, leaning forward to peck a kiss to his daughter's forehead. "It's more than okay. Now, let me go grab my camera, so I can take some pictures of you two before you change. I left it in my seat and-"

"Oh, I'll go get it! Help Kate, she hurt her feet," Alexis whispers with a failed attempt at conspicuousness.

Kate glances up to shoot Alexis a narrowed look. "I can hear you."

But his daughter is already skipping past them for the dressing room door, leaving her and Castle alone in the empty room. He stands from the floor, nods to the chair.

"Sit."

She purses her lips, but descends to the chair she rose from to make a truce with his ex wife, Alexis's real mother. God, she's bitter and she hates it.

"We'll take a bath tonight," he murmurs, bending to curl his fingers at the back of her knee, elevating her leg to unravel the tightly bound straps of ribbons at Kate's ankle, and stroking his thumb to each imprinted piece of skin. "Soak for a while in some Epsom salt and those special oils you like."

Kate hums, can't deny the thought sounds heavenly.

"Peppermint oil," she murmurs, watching the corner of his mouth quirk.

"Perfect for the holidays."

He eases the ballet shoe from her foot, wincing at the bruising painting her bones, the blisters, some weeping and raw, that decorate her toes. He's used to it, has seen the cost of being a dancer many times in the past year, but she trained extra hard this week, spent too much time in her pointes, and it shows.

"Jeez, Kate," he mumbles, brushing his thumb to the slight purpling of her toes. "How do you even walk?"

"It's not that bad." He arches his brow at her, but she merely shrugs. She's put her body through far worse. "Barely feel it."

"Long bath _and_ a massage."

"Mm, a merry Christmas indeed," she smirks, but he only frowns in response, sighing as he skims his hand along the sore muscle of her calf.

"Kate, I'm sorry."

Her brow creases. She knows he feels bad about Meredith showing up, stealing some of the joy from Alexis's eyes with their arguing, but he already apologized-

"This was your big night," he continues, easing her leg back down, looking so distressed for no reason. "A big night for both of you, but I know it was your first time performing again and you did _so_ good. You were stunning up there and I'm so sorry if this-"

"Rick," she interrupts, but the frown across his mouth has only managed to deepen.

"Tonight was supposed to be about us, the three of us," he finally lets out. "As a family."

"It still is," she murmurs, snagging one of his hands from his side, allowing him to pull her to her feet. "Just because Meredith showed up and shook things up a little doesn't change anything, Castle. Alexis and I still had a good performance, we're still going out for ice cream even though it's freezing outside-"

His lips twitch and she raises her hand to his cheek, cradling his jaw in her palm and brushing her thumb to the upturned corner of his mouth.

"We're still going to take your kid to see some Christmas lights and then we're going to go home, put Alexis to bed, and take a bath, like we would have regardless," she murmurs, slipping her other hand beneath his suit jacket to hook her fingers in the waistband of his slacks.

"That all, Ms. Beckett?" he questions, teasing softly, but his eyes are alight with affection, approval.

"Not even close," she grins, her fingers ascending from his cheek to tread through the soft hairs at the base of his skull. He takes the hint with ease, leaning in to kiss her so she doesn't have to lift on her toes.

"You called it home," he mumbles into her mouth. "The loft."

Kate hums, holding to the collar of his shirt as she sways into the enticing warmth of his chest.

"You're home, you and Alexis," she confesses, what he has to have already known.

"Then come home," he murmurs, drawing back just enough to tilt his forehead into hers. "And stay."

The smile blooms unbidden across her lips. "Kinda already am, Castle. But if this is you asking me to live with you-"

"It is," he nods and her heart falls into an uneven arrhythmia even though she already knew this next step was inevitable. She already lives with him, simply has to move the rest of her stuff from her apartment to his to make it official. Hardly a step at all. "And… maybe it's a little more than that too."

"More?" she murmurs, intrigue striking the tempo of her heartbeat to increase, rushing through an eight count. What more could he-

The door swings open, Alexis rushing through with Castle's camera clutched to her chest. "You didn't ask her yet, did you?"

"Ask me?" Kate echoes, watching him sigh, glance over his shoulder to pin Alexis with a long-suffering look.

His daughter winces. "Oops."

"Rick," she whispers, both sets of her fingers curling around the lapels of his suit.

He looks back to her with nerves brimming in his eyes.

"I was going to ask you tonight, either during the Christmas lights or maybe at home, in front of the tree," he muses, his chest rising and falling with a quick and uncertain breath. "Then I thought about waiting for New Year's, because I know Christmas is… it's understandably bittersweet for you and I don't want anything about this to be bitter-"

"Dad," Alexis groans from behind. "Just ask."

"Yeah, Castle," she breathes, the question gone from her voice, her mind. "Ask me."

A smile flickers across his lips, confidence returning, and then he's reaching inside his jacket, digging into an inner pocket, and descending to one knee.

"Katherine Houghton Beckett," he murmurs, lifting a gorgeous ring between them, sparkling with diamonds that are beautiful but not blinding, exactly what she would have wanted. "Me and my kid are ridiculously in love with you."

Alexis giggles from a few feet away, watching them with the camera shuttering with the capture of each photo, but Kate can only smile, feeling it threaten to tremble and break with an overwhelming combination of joy and tears. She's never been one to get weepy over anyone, but she just danced for the first time in years, bearing her soul to the stage and feeling invigoration flush her veins, his little girl called her 'mom' and is currently bouncing with anticipation at the idea of her officially becoming part of their family, and the man she's in love with is down on one knee with a ring. She'll give herself a pass just this once.

"I never want to be without you, Kate. Neither of us do." Alexis is quiet at his back now, waiting, while Rick holds her gaze, lets her see everything in his. "I never want the dance between us to stop, so will you marry me?"

"Of course I'll marry you," she whispers, chuckling as Alexis squeals and dragging Castle to his feet when he reaches for her hand. She lets him have it, watches him slide the ring on and steal her breath before she's arching on her aching toes to seal another kiss to his lips.

"I love you too, both of you," she adds, shooting a grin over Castle's shoulder to the little girl snapping pictures with her father's expensive camera. Engagement photos with him in formal wear while Kate's dressed like a flower, wonderful.

"Good, because now you're stuck with us," he murmurs, soft and teasing, but oh so serious too. He's been serious about her from the start.

Maybe it's why none of this comes as a surprise. The time, the place, yes, but not the idea of marrying him.

No, the acceptance that she would likely spend the rest of her life with Rick Castle and his daughter settled over her the night of Alexis's first recital, the night he danced with her in their living room in nothing but silence and city lights. The night she realized she never wanted him to let her go.

Kate laces her arms around his neck for the second time that night, her gaze catching on the ring sparkling on her finger, before she drops her forehead to rest against his.

"Good," she echoes just above a whisper. "Because the dance with you never ends, Castle."


	9. Hiraeth

_Chapter 9: Hiraeth_

 _After being abducted on their wedding day, Castle is found six years later with no memory of his missing time and no knowledge of all that has happened while he's been gone, including the daughter he had with Kate. This chapter is set after the original story concludes and offers a glimpse into Castle, Beckett, and Lily's first Christmas together as a family._

* * *

He has so many questions crowding on the tip of his tongue, at the seam of his lips, but he can't afford to just let any one slip free. He doesn't want to overwhelm her with an interrogation about a time of year that was never easy to begin with.

Another stab of guilt pierces through him.

They spent their first Christmas together just a little over a year before his disappearance, their second only months prior, and then he was gone for six years. Six years of missed time with his wife - _fiancée_ , _Rick_ , he reminds himself yet again - six years of missed time with Alexis, with Lily, the little girl he never even knew he existed until he was found just a few months ago. Six years of missed Christmases.

Lily is about to turn seven and has never had a Christmas with him.

Kate nudges his hip and he startles, glances over to her in question.

"Sorry," she murmurs, her lips quirking sheepishly, but she's watching him with the all too familiar concern in her eyes. "You've just been staring at the same tree for the past five minutes. I was kinda worried you froze."

She pushes the thermos of hot chocolate into his gloved hands, the heat of it penetrating the fabric to warm his palms.

"Where's Lily?" he asks, taking a long sip of the cocoa. Alexis apparently taught Kate their special recipe ages ago and he hums at the mouthwatering mixture of rich chocolate and melted marshmallows.

"Skipping through the rows of trees," Kate chuckles, tilting her head to the left. Castle follows her gaze just in time to catch a glimpse of their daughter through the thick rows of branches, trotting by in her puffy blue coat.

He grins, some of the ache in his heart dissipating. Kate drifts in a little closer to him and he slips an arm around her waist, draws her snugly into his side.

"What's wrong, love?" she murmurs, brushing her cold nose to his jaw. "Scars pulling in the cold?"

"A little," he admits, trying his best to ignore the fierce tugging lancing through multiple spots across his back, the bitter December chill aggravating scars both old and new.

"Then?" she inquires, because of course she knows, just like he knows every time something's bothering her. It's a convenience and a curse.

Castle sighs and lowers his cheek to her temple, breathes in the scent of her hair beneath the overwhelming aroma of pine and sap in the air.

"Nothing's wrong, I just…" He was so excited when she suggested they pick out a tree today, surprise Lily with the trip out to the Christmas tree farm, but he wasn't prepared for the sorrow it would bring him too. He's had many things to feel guilty about since his return, regardless of whether any of it was truly his fault or not, but he didn't even consider how badly Christmas would get to him. "How have you spent the last six Christmases, Kate?"

Her breath doesn't catch, her face doesn't fall, but he can feel the instant drench of melancholy that engulfs her at the mention of the past holidays she's had to endure. He almost doesn't know if he wants the answer anymore, if it'll hurt too much for both of them to relive those kinds of memories.

"I was still pregnant during the first one," she recalls, her voice soft and her fingers curling at his side, tucking into his coat pocket. "Heavily pregnant, actually."

"Oh, right," he murmurs the realization, his gaze drifting to her stomach reflexively. Kate being pregnant isn't hard for him to imagine, it's something he sometimes allowed himself to think about before Jerry Tyson kidnapped him on their wedding day, something he allowed himself to daydream about even after, when his mind needed something good and pure to cling to in the darkness of his cell. He doesn't think he'll ever stop feeling the gut-wrenching regret of missing the daydream come true. "You were pregnant before the wedding."

She sighs and he lets go of the thermos to slip off one of his gloves, fit his bared fingers to the cool, unprotected skin between her jaw and the coverage of her scarf. Kate carries as much guilt as he does, if not more, hoarding shame and responsibility for things he would never blame her for, things beyond her control.

One of those things was how she found out she was pregnant prior to his disappearance and didn't get to tell him in time. A surprise she was saving for after the wedding.

"I'm glad I never knew," he told her months ago, not long after Lily's existence was revealed, explained. "It would have been worse and Tyson - if he would have tortured it out of me… I never would have forgiven myself."

Their little girl would have been as good as dead, of that he's certain.

Kate leans into the warmth of his palm against her skin before checking over her shoulder to keep an eye on Lily.

"I'd been on desk duty since October, but Gates refused to let me work on Christmas, told me it was pointless if I couldn't be out in the field," she explains, but her lips are curling into a smirk that he can't help but mimic as they watch Lily performing a cartwheel through the clear path of snow.

"How does she have so much energy?" he chuckles while Lily pauses to adjust the beanie on her head.

"That's all you, babe," Kate grins, using the hook of her fingers in his coat to lead him away from the cluster of trees they've been huddled against for the past few minutes.

They walk for a handful of moments, comfortable silence between them and her warmth at his side, before she lets out a soft breath, expelling in a cloud of white from her lips.

"I felt so lost, because going back to my tradition, keeping watch over the city, was safe for me, something I could rely on," she murmurs, flexing her fingers to twine through his when he slips his hand into his pocket to join hers. "Lanie offered for me to spend Christmas with her family, Esposito did too, and of course Ryan and Jenny, but I - if I couldn't spend Christmas with you, I didn't want to spend it with anyone."

His heart snags in its beating, catching on the jagged bone of a rib and tearing a fresh hole in the already wounded muscle. The picture of it all is too clear - Kate, pregnant and broken, still searching for him, but left to spend Christmas alone.

"It was Alexis who came to get me," she reveals with an affectionate twitch of her lips, a smile he's noticed is reserved solely for his oldest daughter. "She was so hyper vigilant about my health during the pregnancy, but she also just... she really wanted me to be happy. I think it helped her, you know? Trying to help me, trying to ease her pain and mine at the same time. It's why she's so good at her job."

He tries to swallow past the wet lump of emotion in his throat, but this is just the first Christmas of many that she will likely break his heart in telling.

"She forced me out of my apartment," Kate laughs quietly, squeezing the hand tangled with hers. "Dragged me over to the loft, going on and on about how I needed a proper meal and a positive environment, how you would never want me to be alone on Christmas and would never forgive either of us if I spent it holed up in my dull apartment-"

"Shit," he rasps, attempting to swipe at his eyes without tipping the thermos still sloshing with hot chocolate.

Kate slows their pace a little, Lily still in sight, and drops her cheek to his shoulder.

"So I rode back in the town car Alexis took to my place and I had Christmas dinner with her and your mom, stayed in our old bed for a couple of nights. It helped," she whispers, turning her head to press her lips to his shoulder even though he can't feel her touch through the thick fabric of his pea coat. "I had Lily just a little over a month later."

He sighs, imagining Kate curled up in their bed without him, her stomach swollen with a baby on the verge of arriving. A baby who came only a few weeks after the anniversary of her mother's death. It must have been so hard for her, a brutal toll taken on her emotional state. If he would have been there, he could have helped, made it at least a little easier-

"You'll be around for the next one, Rick."

He blinks and looks over to find her watching him, chin on his shoulder and gaze soft, golden against the night sky and bright beams of the lights strung overhead, illuminating the tree farm.

They haven't discussed having more kids, but she already knows he isn't opposed to the idea. It's too soon now, far too soon, but one day…

"Damn right I will," he murmurs, craning his neck to kiss her forehead.

"Guys! Guys, I want this one!" Lily calls, racing towards them and leaving disheveled tracks of snow in her wake. "It's perfect. It's big and extrav-extrava-gant," she sounds out. "Just like Lexi said you love, Daddy. But not _too_ big so it'll still fit in the loft."

Kate smiles and reaches out to adjust the scarf around Lily's neck. "Sounds perfect, Peanut. Show us."

Lily beams up at her mother, but hesitates when her gaze shifts to Castle, her brow falling into a gentle crease.

"What's wrong, Daddy?" she asks, her excitement put on hold in favor of shuffling through the snow to stand in front of him, curling her hands in the edges of his coat. "Is it too much? We can take a break or - or even come back tomorrow?"

God, after his wife - _fiancée_ \- just ripped him apart with memories of her first Christmas without him, his daughter offering to put their Christmas tree shopping on hold just to make sure he's okay is going to be his undoing.

"No, sweetheart," he promises, easing his hand from Kate's to hoist their daughter up into his arms. "I'm picking out a Christmas tree for the first time with you and Mommy. How could I not be okay?"

Lily examines him for a moment, brushing her fingers to the subtle scar that lies below his cheekbone, a healed wound from his second showdown with Tyson a few months ago.

"I just don't want you to be sad. Not on Christmas."

"I'm not sad," he assures her, squeezing her tiny hipbone through the jeans and underlying pair of leggings Kate dressed her in to stay warm. "I'm happy. So happy to be here with both of you. And to see the tree you picked out."

She must deem his words to hold enough truth, because she relaxes in his arms, hooking one around his neck and extending the other to point straight ahead.

"It's that way."

* * *

By the time they return back to the loft, Christmas tree in tow, it's past Lily's bedtime. Their little girl falls asleep in the backseat during the drive home and Castle carries her up to her room, leaving Kate in the parking garage while he quickly tucks her in.

"Hey, I told you to wait," he huffs, jogging back into the garage to find Beckett already halfway to the elevator with the massive evergreen in her arms.

"It's not that heavy," she reasons, craning her neck around a branch to smile at him. In those two Christmases spent with her, he's never seen his wife - _fianc..._ oh, just forget it - this happy, her joy usually tinted with her mourning of the holidays with her mother. "Just help me get it in the elevator."

Castle takes the opposite side of the tree, pine needles poking his face, digging deeper into his skin each time his cheeks rise with a laugh. It isn't easy, maneuvering a tree so tall and thick across the lot, into the elevator that barely fits the three of them, but Kate's breathless huffs of laughter continue to elicit his own.

She's having fun, trying to get this behemoth of a tree that will likely just barely fit in his loft up to their home, and he's having fun with her. He doesn't want to ruin that with any more inquiries about Christmases without him, but the writer in him, that insatiable part of him that will never be content, especially when it comes to her, yearns to know regardless.

Once they finally haul the evergreen through the front door, though, trying to be as quiet as possible to avoid waking Lily, Kate begins to quench his curiosity without him having to ask.

They prop the tree up against the living room wall, taking a break before wrestling it onto the tree stand.

"My dad spent the holidays with me during Lily's first Christmas," she reveals, leaning against the arm of the couch, the curls of her hair disheveled and her coat askew. Her cheeks are rosy from exertion, from smiling, and Castle crosses the room, abandoning the tree to be closer. "It was the first time we spent Christmas together since… well, since my mom died."

"He usually goes up to his cabin," Castle recalls and she nods.

"Yeah, I mean, since you and I were getting married, starting our own life and traditions together, we had talked about him maybe spending Christmas Eve with us at some point," she murmurs, glancing down to the open box of lights on the couch. Kate went by the storage on her way back from work, grabbed a few boxes of Christmas decorations Alexis directed her to, surprising not only Lily, but him as well. Somehow she managed to pick out all of his favorites. "Once Lily was born, though, I think the holidays became important again for him, for both of us."

She purses her lips and Castle takes a seat on the edge of the coffee table, staring up at her, waiting for the rest of the story.

"She was only a few months old, doesn't remember any of it, but my dad showed up with this little tree for us and some old decorations that he didn't… that we still had." Her throat works with a swallow, but he knows why. He knows the holiday season was never easy for her, nor for Jim, but while Kate channeled her grief into her work, her dad drowned in his. Kate clears her throat and runs a hand through her hair, fingers catching in the tangled strands. "Of course, Alexis invited us over for Christmas morning, all three of us-"

"My mother was already gone to London?" he asks, remembering Alexis explaining how Martha ran away to another country a year after his disappearance, found new and unhealthy ways to cope. Stumbling down the same path Jim Beckett once took.

"Yeah, but she came back that year," Kate informs him, curling her fingers around the buttons of her coat and shrugging it from her shoulders.

"Was that the only year?"

Her eyes remain trained on the fabric of her pea coat. His mother is doing better, _so_ much better, and he's proud of her, but Kate knows her drinking is still a sore spot for him, a topic they tend to tread lightly upon.

"Yeah." She sighs, but lifts her eyes to him, offers a sad quirk of her lips. "Christmas was your favorite holiday to celebrate, Rick. I think it was hard for her in the same way it was for me and my dad without my mom."

Castle bows his head, the idea of his mother suffering from the kind of pain he's witnessed Kate experience widening the hole in his chest.

"But she called every year to Skype with Alexis and Lily, sent presents too. It meant a lot to them."

"Did you, your dad, and Alexis continue spending Christmases together?" he inquires, hope bidding in his chest, attempting to soothe along the ragged edges of his grief.

"Essentially," she confirms, but her eyes are falling away from his again. Her arms wrap around the coat in her hands, holding it to her sternum. He knows what she's about to say before the words leave her mouth, what has to come next in the timeline, so he beats her to them.

"When did Tom start spending Christmas with you?"

Her eyes reluctantly rise to meet his, remaining locked as she sucks in a subtle breath. "Last Christmas was the first time. We went to visit Tom's family on Christmas Eve."

He looks away, skin heating with irrational jealousy while his stomach burns with ice. They've been over this, plenty of times, and he holds no malice towards her for pursuing a relationship with Tom Demming, he has no malice for the man himself. Tom was a good step-dad to Lily, he still is - often taking Lily out to hockey games in the winter, soccer in the spring - and he was a good man to Kate. He was there for them, took care of them for a little while, and as sharp as it stings, Rick can never resent him for that.

"How was it?" he manages, tearing his eyes away from the spot of his knee that they dropped to. But when he returns his gaze to Kate, she looks as if she just confessed one of her greatest sins, and he hates himself a little more.

"Kate-"

"It was different," she shrugs, reaching absently for the chain around her neck. She still wears his ring there, not yet ready to part with the piece of him that remained with her even when he couldn't. "They were nice, a good family. Lily liked them and they adored her, but I - I don't think they liked me."

"What?" he huffs, affronted and rising from the coffee table.

"Tom's father's a firefighter, his mom stayed home to raise him and his brother, who's also a cop. They're a good family," she muses, but her jaw is squaring in that way she often does to keep her emotions steady. "Protective. I think they knew I was never right for him, that I never… loved him the right way. That I couldn't."

"They didn't even know you," he argues, realizing how ridiculous it is, defending her against a family who was only looking out for their son by the sounds of it. But the idea of anyone making his wife feel unwelcome unsettles him, elicits the flaring need to stand up for in any way he can. "They should have been thrilled. Tom could never do better than you."

Her eyes flicker up to him, threatening to shine with moisture in the soft light of the loft.

"No one's better than you, Kate."

"Rick," she whispers, shaking her head, but he's already clearing the few steps of distance between them, wrapping his arms around her.

Her coat falls from her arms, her limbs banding around him instead.

"I'm sorry," she rasps, fisting her fingers in the shirt at his back, knuckles pressing to his scars.

"No, love," he breathes, burying his nose in her hair, lips at her temple. "It wasn't supposed to be a guilt trip. You didn't do anything wrong."

She scoffs and he tightens his arms around her.

"Kate, you didn't. I'm just jealous," he admits, smoothing his hand down her spine. "I'm always going to be jealous. But not angry. Well, not at you. Maybe slightly at the Demming family for making you feel unwelcome."

"They just didn't want their son to get his heart broken and I think it was pretty clear how that was inevitable with me," she confesses quietly, her cheek at his shoulder. "I felt so guilty - being with him, not being over you - I had to step out, call Alexis."

"You called Alexis?" he asks, his voice level but the surprise alive in his chest as she nods.

"I told Tom he should stay with his family for the night, for Christmas. He knew I spent Christmas day with your family and we never even talked about it, but having him come… it just wasn't an option."

He feels himself relax a little at that, feels like an asshole for it, but he can't help appreciating that there were certain parts of his life, his life with Kate, that went untouched by another man.

"It wasn't fair, to just shut him out like that," she sighs, but her arms are tightening around his torso. "He understood, though. He stayed with his family and instead of driving back home, I drove here. Lily didn't mind, knew Santa brought presents to both the loft and our apartment," she chuckles, but it's watery, empty, and breaking his heart. "I just needed to be here."

"That's why you called Alexis," he murmurs and Kate nods again.

"Lily made Christmases beautiful, brought the joy back into them, but I just - god, I hated them without my mom, but I hated them even more without you," she gets out, one of her hands releasing his shirt to snake between them, swipe at her eyes. "It's why this year is so important. It's the first year I'm actually looking forward to it and feel like I can finally give her the Christmas she deserves-"

"Kate," he breathes, easing back to see her face. Mascara is smudging the corners of her eyes, her nose tinted red, so much guilt running through every line of her features. "You've made every Christmas special for her."

Her brow instantly furrows. "Rick, you can't know-"

"Yes, I can." He skims his knuckles along the slash of her cheekbone, sweeping his thumb to a trace of moisture. He hates when she cries more than anything, every tear that slips free chipping away at his heart. "Kate, I look at that little girl and I can see the amazing job you did raising her. The last six years… they've been hell for us both, but you never let any of that affect our daughter. She's been gushing about Christmas since Thanksgiving ended, not because it's something she doesn't get to experience or because it's her first Christmas with me. It's because you've made Christmas into something for her to look forward to regardless of how you feel about it. You put our kid first every time and that's why you're such an extraordinary mother."

She arches on her toes to kiss him, gratitude and desperation that she keeps at bay on her lips. Rick cradles her cheek, lets himself get lost in the ardency of her mouth over his, the way she sighs with content, whimpers softly with need. He wants to eradicate the sadness he can taste on her tongue, the desolation those last six years left, but it's built up, clinging to her.

He vows to rid her of it little by little, to let her and Lily strip away what's left of his own.

A fresh tear streaks down her cheek, pooling against his hand. It has him pulling away with concern, but her lips attempt a fleeting smile against his.

"I'm glad she loves it as much as you," she whispers, lifting her fingers to caress his cheek. "She's so much like you, Rick. She has so much joy and enthusiasm, such a good heart-"

"That's not-"

"Yes, it is," she presses, cradling his jaw in her palm. "Every day I look at her, I see you." Her smile grows, allowing him a glimpse of her teeth and lighting a flicker of gold in her eyes. "I love our daughter more than anything and I may have raised her for the last six years, but I'm not the only one responsible for who she is. She's part of you too, Castle. That inherent good in her, the light she carries, that's always been you."

"Both of us," he settles for, leaning in to seal his lips to her forehead. "You and me both, Kate."

She tilts her head, nose bumping his as their lips brush. Electricity sparks through everything else - the guilt and grief they share, the sadness, the heartbreak, the acceptance - and Castle lifts his other hand to curve at her nape, drag her impossibly closer.

"We can finish putting up the tree later," she murmurs, kissing the corner of his mouth and coiling her fingers along the lapels of his unbuttoned coat.

"Good plan, since I'm cold and we both smell like tree sap," he chuckles, combing his fingers through her hair. "And my scars are pretty tight."

Her hands slip beneath his sweater at the admission of aching he's been trying to ignore all night, scaling her palms along the rough terrain of his back. Her touch is hot and soothing to the Jackson Pollock of scars spattered across his skin, some of the tightness unfurling beneath her fingertips. She presses against the worst one, the thick diagonal strip of raised flesh that spans from the edge of his shoulder to the top of his waist, just shy of his hip. The whorls of her fingertips brand the dead tissue, infuse it with heat that momentarily stops the pulsing irritation.

His chest expands against hers, releases with a deep breath.

"Come on," she murmurs, dusting her lips to his jaw and guiding him backwards, through his office and into his bedroom. "Warm up with me in the shower."

* * *

Kate is curled at his back, her hair still damp from the shower and seeping through his t-shirt, but he doesn't dare move. The loft is warm, toasty with the heat emanating from the electric fireplace in the dining room, and his wife is tucked into the corner of the sofa with him, her body draped in his clothes and burrowed against his spine.

She nuzzles her cheek at his shoulder blade, the smooth plane of her skin resting upon strips of uneven and scarred flesh that Tyson ripped open with a whip, a knife.

"Do you remember any of your Christmases these past six years?" Kate asks softly.

Castle pauses with the tangle of Christmas lights in his hands; he's supposed to be unraveling them so the tree can be interweaved with lights before they go to bed, all ready for Lily to start decorating in the morning.

He flexes his fingers within the unintentional cat's cradle of cords and tiny light bulbs. "I had a hard time keeping track of the days, could only tell by the weather what season it was. But Christmas… I never knew when it came and went. Which I'm kinda glad for."

She shifts a little, turning her head to dust her lips at the back of his neck, grazing the tip of the highest scar stretching to his nape.

"Tit for that?" he muses at her calling for his reminiscence of pain after she bared six years of her own, but Kate shakes her head.

"No, I just… I hoped they didn't ruin Christmas for you too," she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder before moving to rise from the sofa.

Castle catches her wrist, though, dropping the nest of light to the ground between his knees, coaxing Kate into his lap instead.

"I think the most Tyson ever did was throw a candy cane into my cell," he recalls, lacing his arms around her waist when she takes a seat across his thighs. "I remember Nieman bringing me a newspaper article about your success rate around the same time. I didn't think of it as a Christmas gift, since they'd only ever used you as another way to torture me." Kate shifts closer to him, her arms around his neck and her heartbeat sealing against his as her body curls into his once more. "But it wasn't even a photo, just an entry praising the Twelfth, your closure rate. It was gone the next day, but - I guess that was Nieman's way of showing some mercy for Christmas."

"Not mercy," she growls quietly, brushing her lips to the edge of his brow.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he murmurs, squeezing the sharp bone of her hip, meaning it. "I'm here with you for Christmas again, Kate. I get to spend Christmas with my daughters, with Lily for the first time. Every other year, every other Christmas is irrelevant."

Kate sighs, a sound of acceptance this time, agreement, and drops her forehead back to his. Her skin still smells of pine, blending with the intoxicating scent of cherries, her body warm and clean, alight with energy from the time they spent in the shower.

They still have weeks to go, but his Christmas is already off to a wonderful start.

"It'll be our best one yet," she promises. "It'll be special."

He grins and brushes a kiss to her lips, feels a little more of that holiday sorrow melting away beneath his mouth. "It already is."


	10. Compromised

_Chapter 10: Compromised_

 _When Captain Kate Beckett refuses to relent in hunting LokSat, CIA agent Richard Castle is brought in to stop her. But mission quickly gives way to attraction and both find themselves willing to sacrifice more than they bargained for to be together. This chapter is set after the original story._

* * *

"Anything specific you want for Christmas, Beckett?"

Kate rolls her eyes. "For you to come home."

"Home, huh?" he teases, his voice a welcome caress to her senses, but not enough. She dreads Christmas every year, dreads the crimes people commit and manage to interlace with the holiday theme, dreads the lonely hours spent in her office, watching over the city while others spend it with loved ones. She's never complained about her tradition, taking it in stride each year since becoming a rookie, but for the first time… she wants more.

She wants him.

After lounging in Italy with him for a month in the fall, once their bullet wounds were healed and her heart open, she's grown used to him. Attached.

And the brownstone he bought on Broome isn't as warm, welcoming, without him in it.

"Yeah, home. New York, where you live." He doesn't respond and she purses her lips. He just wants to hear her say it, relish in the verbalization of them living together, and she relents with a growl. "With me."

"I'm trying to get back to you as fast as I can, sweetheart," he says, wearing a grin she doesn't even have to see to know is there.

They both knew he would have to go overseas on occasion, travel across the world for missions that could not be handled from an office in New York, but as she rests her head against the cool glass of her own office window, she wishes he wouldn't have been shipped out across the Atlantic so close to Christmas.

His attempt to resign from the CIA was unsuccessful, but his compromise of working from New York has been nothing short of perfect for them. He oversees missions from his office every day, comes home to her every night, while she continues to run the Twelfth. She tells him about their cases during dinner and he trades top secrets with her in bed. She keeps expecting it to become monotonous, for one of them to go crazy - the two of them working office jobs - but it's been months since they returned in September, settled into routines, and she hasn't grown sick of them yet.

She hopes she never does.

"I don't want to spend my first Christmas away from you either," he adds, his voice soft and husky, rich and low and clawing at the pit of need in her stomach.

"First Christmas?" she chooses to concentrate on instead. "Castle, you're in your forties-"

"No reason to bring my age into this," he huffs, striking a smile to her lips. Kate turns away from the window, from watching the snowflakes falling through the evening sky and coating the city, and sinks down into her office chair. The precinct is practically empty, the officers with families having worked the last of their shifts yesterday and this morning, only a handful of her usual graveyard officers and Esposito stuck with her for Christmas Eve.

"What? Don't like being reminded of how you're ten years older than me?"

"Beckett," he curses her and her smiles grows.

"Don't worry, baby. You've got impressive stamina for an old man."

"More stamina than you," he challenges, coaxing the heat in her stomach to coil. "Unless you care to try proving me wrong on that statement."

"You already know you're wrong," she scoffs, crossing her legs and leaning back in the chair.

"We'll see about that when I get home. I've been gone for almost three weeks, we have a lot to make up for."

"Castle," she sighs, scraping her hair back, but he just laughs at her.

"Getting you all hot and bothered at work?"

"No," she mutters, but the amusement in his tone holds true.

"Oh, I _am_. I know that tone too well," he points out smugly. "You'd rather be holed up in your office on Christmas Eve talking to me than having fun with Espo at the mini Christmas party in the bullpen because I've got you in the mood-"

" _Castle_ ," she hisses, covering her eyes with her hand, the cool touch of her fingers a welcome contrast to her heated flesh. "Stop it. And tell me how this is considered your first Christmas."

"Well, not my _first_ , I had those seven with my mother… well, six. Hunt took me in before Christmas that year," he murmurs, doing the math aloud. "But this is my first adult Christmas-"

"Wait," she interrupts, shifting in the chair, pulling one of her knees to her chest. "Those Christmases with your mom, those were your last Christmases?"

His hesitation to answer confirms it for her and oh, her heart cracks a little. It's so easy for her to imagine that seven year old little boy, that childlike wonder of Christmas, extinguished by a man interested only in training him to be a soldier.

"I mean, we didn't _celebrate_ , but Hunt would get me a gift in those early years, up until I was a teenager," he hedges, but it only causes her hatred for his father to intensify. She hasn't seen Jackson Hunt since that day in the hospital, when he took a scalpel to her insecurities, ripped them open, and left her with the harrowing task of stitching them closed.

 _You think a man who has spent his life traveling the world, making it a better place and serving this great country, will just settle for something so small and miniscule? For you?_

But Castle took the needle from her, sewed up her doubts with his chest at her back every night in bed, with their favorite Chinese food and the persistent smile he has for her on even the worst days, with his voice in her ear even when he's an ocean away. With the evidence of all the ways he loves her.

" _A_ gift? Singular?" she clarifies, her heart sinking deeper with his lack of response.

"Technically, it's just another day," he tries to reason, but her heart surges with the fierce urge to defend him, protect the little boy who was robbed of all those Christmases he deserved.

"Not to a kid," she argues quietly, fisting her hand over her chest to calm the riot inside.

He tends to shy away from talk of his childhood, of his mother and the way Hunt raised him. It's still too raw and he'll only dole out pieces of his past little by little, turning the tables on her for a change. She's not used to being the one who has to scratch at old scars to know the stories behind them, accustomed to hiding her own, but she wants more from him than she's ever wanted from anyone else. She wants his past, the rare but pure memories with his mother, the ache of an empty childhood with his father, the years of training and discipline that shaped him into the skilled but lonely agent without purpose prior to meeting her. She wants everything he has to offer, wants to bury everything she has inside of him in return.

She wants to be his future, she wants to love him enough to make up for the solitary life he's led since he was seven years old.

"Not for you," she adds, unfurling her fist at her chest, skating her fingers over the scar below her collarbone out of habit. She wonders if the raised flesh over his chest is burning like hers, tight and itching in the winter air. "You deserved magic, Rick."

"And I found it," he answers promptly this time. "In you. Also found the magic of a flight that arrived on time."

Her heart skips and her hand falls away from her bullet scar. "What are you talking about?"

"I may have missed out on thirty something Christmases," he muses. "But if I get to spend the rest of them with you, I can live with that. Turn around, Beckett."

She spins in her chair and feels her heart stop before it stampedes.

Rick Castle is standing in her office doorway, the duffel bag he left with slung over his shoulder, his cheeks bright red from the cold, and a thick layer of stubble decorating his jaw.

He lowers the phone from his ear and drops the duffel to the floor.

"Surprise," he grins.

The phone slips to her desk, landing safely on a stack of files, and Kate pushes up from the chair. She has to refrain from lunging for him, the door to her office open and her blinds partially slit, but she does make quick work of crossing the room, striding straight for him. Castle catches her when they collide, her arms around his neck and her mouth immediately rising into his for a kiss that eviscerates the chill of December that's been embedded in her bones since he left.

"You're here," she gasps, trying not to moan in relief at the taste of him on her mouth again. It's been three weeks, but it feels like so much longer.

God, she has it so bad for him.

"Home for Christmas," he smiles, so broad and breathless, causing their kiss to fall apart. "Kinda wish I would have actually surprised you at home, though. I can't show you how much I missed you while you've got the Christmas crew outside."

Kate huffs a laugh, but her arms are slipping from his neck, allowing her fingers to rise and scratch at the light beard consuming his chin, his jaw.

"What happened, no razors in your undisclosed location?" she quips, arching her brow at him.

"Honestly? I just never had the time," he chuckles, cradling her hand at his cheek to duck his head, brush a kiss to her palm, the inside of her wrist. "Don't like it?"

"Mm," she debates, leaning in to graze her cheek against his, abrading her skin with the scrape of overgrown stubble. "Maybe not long term, but I won't deny it's pretty hot."

The apple of his cheek swells against hers and she brushes a kiss to the still smooth patch of skin below his eye, stealing a breath of his scent before she draws back.

"I'll shave in the morning." Kate hums her acknowledgement, but her attention is riveted to the exploration her fingers have performed a million times, dancing over the shells of his ears, through the fine hairs at the base of his skull, down the warm skin of his throat. "You really missed me."

Her eyes dart back to his, the corner of her mouth quirking, but he… he looks so surprised.

"Of course I missed you," she mutters, pressing her fingers to his nape as she elevates on her toes, staining another kiss to his mouth, chaste but hard, enough to have him gripping her waist. "Was it not apparent until now?"

Castle's arms lace around her waist, their hips kissing in reunion while their chests graze.

"I'm just-" He shrugs, his eyes averting to the site of her gunshot wound, hidden beneath the sweater she's wearing. "Not used to having someone to come home to. To being missed."

"Castle," she sighs, the caress of her lips over his softer this time, reverent and slow. His hands splay at her spine, one slipping beneath the cashmere to seal to her skin, infusing heat through her system like revival after a three week hibernation for winter. Her fingers comb through his hair, tangling as she strokes her tongue past the seam of his lips, reacquainting herself with the warm cavern of his mouth, so sweet and welcoming.

He moans, quiet and needful, bowing his head to rest against hers when they're forced to part for air.

"It's not home without you anymore," she whispers between uneven breaths, cradling his face in her hands. "I love you, you idiot, of course I missed you."

He chokes on a laugh and nuzzles her cheek, the unfamiliar sensation of his beard tickling her skin and causing her to squirm with a noise that sounds far too close to a giggle for her liking.

"I'll never leave again," he pledges, easing back in time to see the roll of her eyes.

"Or I can just come with you."

One of his eyebrows curves. "You miss the streets more than I thought if you're volunteering for a mission."

"Maybe," she hedges, because yeah, being cooped up in her office these last couple of years, no longer able to be in the middle of what she loves to do, is wearing on her. Being with a spy whose job requires for him to travel the world hasn't exactly helped, only serving to make her even more stir crazy in her career.

"If you're serious, we can talk about it. I can't officially take you out in the field with me until we get you certified, but I can speed up that process." Her heart stumbles a little, the idea of a chance to do more, to make a difference, a desperate thing aching to be free inside of her. She's climbed as high as she wants to go on the homicide division's ladder and while running for senate has been another idea thrown at her, one she has yet to sit down and seriously consider, working with Rick again is an appealing option to say the least. "Completely up to you, love. But you definitely have my support."

"Yeah, agent?" she murmurs under her breath. It's not a secret that he runs the New York office, but his involvement in their operations, his missions for the agency, are not to be made public.

"Saving the world with Kate Beckett has always been a fantasy of mine," he smirks, drawing his hand from beneath her shirt. Her skin mourns the loss, the heat.

"We'll talk about it," she confirms, biting her lip. "In the meantime, I should probably stick around here for another hour. Do you mind-"

"Of course not," he grins, letting her go to heft his duffel from the floor, transferring it to the couch across the room. "I'm dying for a chance to raid that buffet table out there."

"No strict diet this week?" she teases, always making fun of him for eating so clean. Getting him to indulge in sweets, fried foods, anything outside of the meticulous regimen he was raised on, is often like pulling teeth.

"It's Christmas, Beckett. I want some of cookies and hot chocolate," he states like he's proud of himself for it.

Kate chuckles while he shimmies out of his coat, tossing it over his arm, sending whatever he stored in the pocket flying out. His eyes bulge as he watches the small box tumble to the floor, his skin paling just slightly while he bends to grab it.

She almost asks what could have him so panicked, but then her eyes narrow on the box grasped in his fingers - the size of his palm, rich black velvet, perfect for jewelry. For a ring.

Castle notices her watching, of course, and sighs, stares down at the tiny box cradled in his hand.

"Maybe it was a little presumptuous, cheesy to do this at Christmas time," he murmurs, setting her heart fluttering. But it can't be a ring, can't possibly be the kind of ring she thinks it is; he can't possibly be doing this _now_.

His chest expands with a deep breath beneath the black fabric of his sweater and then he's coming towards her desk, where she stands with her heart flapping too hard, its feathers in her throat. He stops in front of her.

"But you did say you would say yes."

"Rick," she whispers, but he's flipping open the velvet box, revealing a ring inside.

"It's - I hadn't planned to do this yet," he chuckles, the nerves alight in his laughter. "But when I was in Belfast, I passed this jewelry store and saw it. Honestly, if you want to hold off, that's fine too-"

"It's beautiful," Kate murmurs, studying the band of twined silver, trinity knots framing a subtle diamond. She doesn't think she's ever seen such an intricately designed engagement ring before.

"Celtic jewelry usually is," he concurs, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Wanted something better for you than a typical diamond ring from _Tiffany's_."

She doesn't know how to make him understand that she would be happy with a plastic ring from a toy vending machine if it was from him, doesn't have the words to tell him. Especially not now.

She touches the tip of her index finger to the slim branches of silver, the glimmering diamond. "I love it, Castle."

"Really?" he whispers and she tears her gaze from the ring to look at him, so certain yet unsure at the same time.

Certain of her, unsure of her response to the engagement ring between them. She has a feeling he was preparing himself for wide-eyed terror.

Kate chews on her bottom lip, attempts to suck in a breath, but her heart is racing. It hasn't even been a year, too soon to even think about marriage, but… well, they were just talking about it a few months ago in Italy, weren't they? So maybe not so crazy after all.

The way she's feeling right now can't be considered crazy, only right. Everything about him, about this, feels right.

"Put it on me." His lips part, his eyes rippling into a radiant shade of blue, like sunshine on water, and his hand reaches for her left.

"I - I should get on one knee," he murmurs belatedly, but Kate only laughs, shaking her head and stepping into him.

"No, I like you close," she grins, watching his smile grow.

He extracts the ring from the velvet box, holding it between his fingers. The smaller diamonds placed amidst the vines of silver catch in the light, sparkling as he slides the band onto her fourth finger, the jewelry fitting around the slim bone as if it was made for her.

"I don't think you'll ever be able to top our first Christmas now," she whispers, horrified by the burn in her eyes. She will _not_ cry like a girl over this.

Castle skates his thumb over the ring, across her knuckle, before returning his hands to frame her hips. "Sounds like you're willing to give me a few more Christmases to try."

Kate drapes her palm to his cheek, silently marveling over the picture of the ring against his smiling face, and leans in on her toes to kiss him once more.

"I'm willing to give you a lifetime."


	11. Caught in the Riptide

_Chapter 11: Caught in the Riptide_

 _When Castle travels to Big Sur in hopes of renewed inspiration for his writing, he meets a woman on the beach and spends the remainder of his vacation learning Kate Beckett's story. This chapter is set between the final chapter of the original fic and its epilogue._

* * *

The panic attacks are becoming unbearable.

Kate slips from his bed as quietly as she can, stumbling through the darkness and into the bathroom. She shuts the door behind her, tries to breathe, inhale and exhale, but the sob shudders out of her, echoes in his gorgeous en suite. She collapses in the farthest corner from the door, burying her face in her knees.

It's fine, it was a _dream_. But the scent of blood like copper is still sharp in her nose, the scar between her breasts twisting with agony and clawing at her chest with the cold, and her hands tingle with the impending promise of a panic attack she doesn't need.

She doesn't know how much longer she can handle this, how much longer she can hide it from him. If she's hiding it at all or if he's just being gracious enough not to say anything. It wouldn't be his first time noticing the signs of her PTSD, but after witnessing the worst of her nightmares, staying over at her apartment too many times to count because she just couldn't handle the paranoia of being alone and he refused to let her, after sitting with her through every panic attack and holding her once they were over and she couldn't help but cry, she wouldn't blame him if he wasn't necessarily enthusiastic about enduring all of it again.

She thought she was okay, stable again after that sniper case in November elicited a week of hell for her mental state, but with Christmas closing in and the frigid temperatures tugging at her bullet wound, she can feel the darkness threatening to consume again.

It's their first Christmas together and she doesn't need it to be special, she won't even be spending the majority of it with him, she just wants it to be untouched by grief and trauma.

The gentle knock on the door has the pounding of her heartbeat stumbling to a pause, her head lifting just as Castle eases the door open and slips inside. It's only been a couple of minutes since she left him in the bed they often share, surely not long enough for him to look so coherent and alert, so awake.

So heartbroken on her behalf.

"Kate," he whispers, the sheer sound of her name on his lips enough to drag another tear down her cheek.

She nods to him in the darkness, watching his chest expand with a breath as he comes towards her. He was waiting, she realizes, waiting until she gave him the okay.

He approaches with too much knowledge in his eyes, not saying anything more until he's descending to his haunches in front of her.

"What happened?" he murmurs, his concern present but not overbearing, his voice a comfort that calms the sea of anxiety crashing through her chest in violent waves. "Nightmare?"

"I just - I don't want him to come back," she confesses, the words strangled in her throat, choking on their way past her lips. "The sniper who shot me - I don't want them to come after you."

"No one's going to-"

"As long as I'm alive, they will," she persists. Because that's what it is - her persistence, the drive to find her mother's killer, to investigate, to keep living, that's going to get her killed. Get him killed. "Rick, I love you. Too much to let you-"

"Kate," he growls, quiet but firm. One of his hands rises to cover her bare knee, his thumb brushing in soothing strokes across her patella. "I love you too. It's why I'm not going anywhere."

A breath shudders past her lips and she drops her forehead to rest against his knuckles. He's an idiot, an idiot to stay with her, to want someone so damaged, but this is the same man who had her falling in love with him in less than a week last summer. What they have isn't something so easily given up on.

And no matter what may be best for him, safest, she doesn't want him to give up on her either.

" _Esti al meu_ ," he murmurs, the rich sound of his voice in Romanian a natural caress to her senses. Her eyes automatically sting. " _Ș_ _i eu sunt al tău_."

She sighs as the words register, lifting her chin to brush her lips to the veins running like rivers along the back of his hand.

He's been practicing his Romanian since she returned home from their summer in Big Sur, since he fell in love with the language like he fell in love with her, hard and fast. Since she pressed her beat up dictionary into his hands one night, when he wouldn't stop pestering her for a translation of the foreign words she sometimes whispered to him in bed.

"Why don't you learn the language yourself," she prompted, smirking while he frowned down at the book she's had for years now, since her first visit to the language's origin. "Surprise me."

He took the book, but shuffled out of her bedroom to her home office, muttering under his breath about purchasing _Rosetta Stone_ instead.

He did surprise her though, picking up a handful of words and phrases with each self taught lesson, like the one he just whispered to her. It was one of his favorites, still a little choppy, but the smoothest phrase he knows aside from _I love you_. He reserved it for moments like these, when she needed to be reminded of the raw and simple truth.

 _You're mine. And I'm yours._

That's what it always comes down to.

"I don't want to be afraid anymore," she confesses, the tightness in her chest loosening just a fraction, allowing her to unfurl from the trembling ball her body has become against the wall. "I want to be more than this, Rick. More for myself, for us."

"Kate," he chastises, but she covers the hand at her knee with the curl of her fingers. She already knows her eyes are bloodshot, dark with dilated pupils , but she lifts them to his anyway, meets his gaze with the desperation unhidden in hers.

"I want us to have a life," she whispers, wanting it so badly it aches. "One that exists outside of the shadows. But I can't even - I need to be okay. I need this to stop."

"Let me take you away for a little while," he suggests automatically, leaving one hand on her knee while the other ascends to the gritty surface of her cheek, streaked with the salt of tears dried. "Somewhere we'll be safe."

Safe. Safe with him.

It sounds like heaven.

"But I - work," she rasps, swiping at her eyes. He finally talked her into letting him shadow her a couple of months ago, using his connections with the city's elite, with the mayor, to weasel his way into her precinct despite her new captain's protests. He knows how strict Gates is, knows that the woman is hardly a fan of favors or bribes, or him. She's completely immune to Castle's charm, much to Kate's amusement and his chagrin.

Not that she's a big fan of Kate, the headstrong lead detective who has the tendency to dive down cases like rabbit holes, either.

There's no way that Gates would let her take any time off, not now, not after all the vacation days she once had saved up that were sacrificed to the summer that followed her shooting.

"Christmas is a week away, you're still working those shifts?" he asks softly, grazing his thumb along her cheek with a tentative touch, so careful with her. Too careful. She hates this.

Kate turns her face into his hand, traps his palm between her jaw and her shoulder with the drape of her cheek. "Yeah."

"Then she can let you have your Christmas early."

* * *

When he says he wants a beach getaway for Christmas, she expects the house he's been raving about in the Hamptons, the gorgeous mansion right on the beach that he just _knows_ she'll love.

What she doesn't expect is for him to let her find the two plane tickets to California in his itinerary once they're already packed and in the car.

She puts up a fight on the drive to the airport the second she realizes that's where they're going, insisting that he and his plan are crazy. Christmas was a week away, Alexis wasn't coming with them, neither was his mother, and they couldn't just _leave_.

But he has an answer for everything. Always does.

They'll be back before Christmas, Alexis is too dedicated to her part time job at the college bookstore to miss her last few shifts, his mother is busy performing her final showings of her Broadway Christmas play, and yes, they can, because Gates granted her the time off and he's his own boss.

She gets on the plane, but she's not happy about it.

Well, not openly.

But it starts to leak out of her as the plane ascends from the tarmac, their destination announced over the intercom, and Kate relents with a sigh, resting her head on his shoulder and letting the excitement seep through her. It may be an unorthodox way of coping, it may be too great of a gift for him to give her, but she could never be upset about returning to her second home, to the sanctuary where she found him.

She can't be upset that they're going back to Big Sur for an early Christmas.

* * *

It's as if the farther away they fly from New York, the lighter she becomes. The pain and panic from nights before dissipate from her eyes, draining from the lines of her face and left behind in the clouds the plane soars above. Ever since the weather began to change, temperatures dropping from the cool air of fall to the bitter chill of winter, he's noticed that Kate changed with it. December doused her in darkness, coaxing the harsh symptoms of PSTD that finally began to recede back to the surface.

She's so ashamed of it, he sees it in her face every time he manages to catch her in a panic attack, but he doesn't want her to feel shame. He just wants her to be okay.

When she confessed that she wouldn't be accepting his invitation to join him and his family for Christmas, when she revealed the reason why ( _my dad and I, we buried Christmas with my mom_ ), her noble tradition to keep watch over the city so families like his could celebrate without fear, he understood, accepted. But it didn't stop his disappointment at the idea of their first Christmas being spent apart, or the heartache that took up residence in his ribcage at the fact that Kate was no longer able to celebrate at all.

The point of this trip, though, was not for celebration. Not necessarily.

She told him not to get her anything for Christmas, but he can give her this, peace of mind and hopefully the same sense of home and belonging that he found when he discovered her amidst the beauty of Big Sur. He can give her a way to recover from the panic and paranoia that's been ripping her to shreds with the holiday sorrow.

Kate's arm snakes through his and her head turns away from the window. She was furious with him on the way to the airport, even throughout their check in and boarding, but she's softened with the distance. It was all for show anyway.

She hates when he goes out of his way for her, does something she considers extravagant or inconvenient for himself or his family, but he would give Kate Beckett the world if she asked and she's just going to have to get used to it. The price of being loved by a clingy best-selling author.

"Thank you," she murmurs, the corner of her mouth curling with the first real smile he's seen in days. "You knew."

His brow dips just slightly. "Knew?"

Kate leans into his side, draping him in warmth that spreads from everywhere she touches. "That I needed this. Missed it. You knew before I did."

"We aren't even there yet," he teases, but he's sliding his hand along the inside of her arm to fit his palm against hers, twining their fingers.

"Yeah, but I - I already feel a little better," she confesses, her smile growing and his heart expands with it. Kate feeling even a little bit better is all he could want this Christmas.

"It's going to be warmer too," he adds belatedly, dumbly. Oh, he totally let her pack for the Hamptons, didn't he? He's going to have to force her to let him take her shopping, buy her some more appropriate clothing for the climate. But Kate hums, not bothered by the dilemma that isn't really a dilemma at all. "Better for the scars."

She sinks a little deeper into his side, her head coming to rest on his shoulder again. No, definitely not bothered. If anything, the reminder seems to be a comfort.

"Oh, and I read that December is the best time to visit if you want Big Sur to yourself, since the weather is cooler and rainy. So, even though we'll already be secluded, we definitely won't be bothered," he lists, all the facts of his last minute research springing to the surface of his mind all at once. "It's also the best time to see the gray whales migrating south. I read that there are plenty of places to watch, but if we hike our trail, I think that cliff that overlooks the coast would be perfect. Oh _and_ it's the perfect month for stargazing too. December's increase in rainstorms keeps the skies clearer, so we can-"

"I love you," she mumbles, lowering her cheek to his clavicle, causing his heart to stutter. She's said the words plenty of times, but his heart never stops soaring because of them.

Rick lowers his lips to the top of her head, sighs softly into her hair. "Love you too, Kate."

* * *

He almost forgot that it's a two mile walk to the cabin from the parking lot.

"I'm going to die."

"Castle," Kate huffs, rolling her eyes at him no doubt. Of course, even with a nagging gunshot wound and her body starved and sleep deprived from trauma (two things he will be sure to remedy in the next few days), Kate moves through the forest as if she never left, hiking the trail to her dad's cabin like it's a walk in the park.

It took him days to adapt the last time he was here, to even begin getting into shape, and while Kate definitely keeps him active at home, he should have spent the week prior to this impromptu trip preparing on the treadmill, building up his stamina.

But she looks so free in the forest, home amidst the towering Redwood trees and the thriving brush, he can't help but smile despite his shortness of breath and heaving chest.

Kate slows from her strides ahead of him, backtracking to snag his hand and draw him along after her.

"C'mon, baby. We've got an hour until sunset and I'd like us to get there before dark," she teases, grinning as he drops the bags he insisted on carrying to catch her by the waist.

"We're more than halfway there, I need a break. And stop calling me baby," he mutters, reeling her body in closer. But Kate comes willingly, lacing her arms around his neck.

"You like when I call you baby," she smirks, sinking a little further into him when he eases a thigh between hers, propping her up.

"I'm accepting of it," he grumbles, bridging his hands at her spine. "But don't tell anyone."

She chuckles, lovely and content, and smoothes her fingers to the scarf around his neck. "Secret's safe with me."

"Feeling better?" he asks with a quirk of his lips.

Her eyes flicker to the woods around them, to the strips of blue sky between the branches and the dying dance of sunlight dappling in her hair through the leaves. The contrast of salt and sunshine mingling with cold air is strange, especially after he grew to associate nothing but the heat of summer with this place. But the chill isn't so biting here, doesn't slice through his sweater or numb his senses like the brutal winters of New York so easily can. The California coast still holds a touch of warmth in the winter.

Then again, maybe it's just Kate that's keeping him warm.

"Yeah," she murmurs, unwinding her arms to slip her hands down to his chest. One curls over the site of his heart, a small frown flickering at the corners of her mouth. "Are you sure Alexis was okay with this?"

His brow furrows. Definitely not the kind of question he was expecting.

"Yeah, I talked to her about it a few days before. I begged her to come too, but like I said, she has that job at the bookstore she's so dedicated to and they still have a few more days until they break for Christmas," he explains, shaking his head at his daughter. "Plus, she favors California in the summer."

Kate hums, but still doesn't look pleased with the answer.

"Kate, you know Alexis adores you, right? She liked you before she even met you and you guys get along great from what I've seen-"

"No," she sighs, meeting his eyes once more with her bottom lip between her teeth. "It's not that. Alexis has been great and we do get along, I love hanging out with your kid." His heart swells, wonderful and breath stealing, like it always does when Kate talks about his daughter but never lessening in its intensity. "I just don't want her to think that this place - Big Sur - is only ours. I want - the last time we were here, we said that the next time we came, she would come with us."

He blinks, impressed by her memory, touched by it, but hating the troubled look in her eyes, the guilt.

"Then again, I guess we never planned to come back so soon," she reasons, more to herself than him, but Castle braces his hands on the sharp bones of her hips, squeezes.

"No, maybe we didn't," he shrugs, brushing his thumbs to the knit fabric of her sweater. "This trip was last minute, but I'd say it was necessary. Sure, we could have got through everything in New York, we've spent the last three and a half months back home together and I'd - well, I'd like to think our relationship is as strong as it can be."

"It is," she confirms, the conviction in her voice solid, reaffirming. It crushes any doubts and fears that may have been threatening to bloom on the spot.

"But this month has been hell for you, Kate. For reasons I understand," he reminds her, watching the whites of her teeth reappear to pierce her long abused bottom lip once more. "So I talked to my daughter, I told her I wanted to surprise you with a trip to Big Sur for Christmas, and I told her she should come with us. And she wanted to. She wants to see Jade Cove and the purple sand and explore all the places you showed me the first time we were here, and she will. In a few months from now, when we come back again and stay longer than a week."

He touches her chin, brushing his thumb to the trapped flesh of her lip between her teeth until she releases it with a sigh.

"We should bring something back for her, for Christmas. Another piece of jade or a jar of purple sand," she murmurs, her lips quirking in the corners, triggering the curve of his.

"I think she would love that." Rick leans forward to press his lips to her forehead. "Thanks for caring about my kid in all of this."

She huffs, draping her palms at his biceps. "She's a good kid, Castle. A generous one too, letting me have you to myself for the next four days. Then again, that does give her extra time to spend with Max..."

"Wait, Max?" Kate smirks and he lets her reclaim his hand, threading their fingers and tugging gently, signaling the end of their break. "Who is Max?"

But he doesn't mind, allowing her to tease and untangle from him, starting back towards the path that leads to her father's cabin with him in tow.

* * *

New York will always be home, but she can't deny that she loves California, loves Big Sur enough to toy with the temptation of wishing they could stay here forever. Not go back.

She's a detective, she loves her job, and she would have no idea what to do here aside from lounge around with Castle and catch up on reading material, spend her days with him on a beach of purple sand. But it's a lovely daydream, an easy one to indulge in while she's laid out under the stars with Castle at her back.

They arrived at the cabin before the sun set, painting the sky in its usual blend of breathtaking oranges and pinks. They took their time unpacking, Rick dragging their two bags to her bedroom while she stocked the kitchen, but her attention is riveted to the kitchen window, to the indigo blanket of night draped over the forest.

The stars look so much brighter in the wintertime, illuminating the darkness to a rich shade of blue, probably lighting up the entire ocean in an ethereal sapphire. She can't recall ever spending any time here in the winter, never really thought to ask her father how beautiful Big Sur could be during the holiday season. It has her craving a night on the beach with Rick, under a star speckled sky, the Milky Way over McWay Falls.

Oh, Castle would love that - camping near the famous waterfall with the most glorious view of the ocean, the shore, and the stars.

But for tonight, she settles for finding him in the bedroom they'll share, dragging him outside to make good on his talk of stargazing.

Of course, Castle needs a few minutes to prepare, grabbing a blanket from the closet and requiring that they acquire hot chocolate to stay warm in the cooling temperatures. She rolls her eyes, but doesn't stop him as he earnestly mixes the milk and chocolate, the giant marshmallows he insisted upon at the grocery store. Such a child. But she finds it was worth it when she takes her first sip from the thermos he places in her hands while he folds his legs beneath him, sits down in the grass with her.

"This is amazing," she hums, cradling the warmth of the thermos to her chest and savoring the rich spread of chocolate and marshmallow across her tongue.

"It's Alexis's secret recipe," he grins, pleased with himself. "Double chocolate, double marshmallow. She thinks I don't know."

Kate inches closer to him in the small clearing of her backyard. He automatically wraps his arm around her shoulders, fits her into his side, and she sighs, couldn't fathom feeling more content than she does now. And it's selfish, letting him drag her across the country for the sole sake of solitude, but it's been over twenty-four hours since her last panic attack and the noose around her heart, her throat, has gone limp. No snipers will come for them here, the freezing temperatures of the city can't drill into the bullet scar between her breasts or the incision scar sliced into her side, still only a few months old and fresh with pain.

She'll never truly be safe, not until the Dragon is slain and the target from her back is burned, but for tonight, for the next few days, no one can touch her or the man she loves. Not here.

"What are you thinking about?" he murmurs, his lips grazing her crown. Kate lifts her head, craving the look on his face, the blues of his eyes that rival the brilliant sea she can hear roaring in the distance and the crooked smile that mimics the crescent moon overhead. The face she fell in love with in this very spot, where he called her salvation not knowing the part he played, is playing now, in saving her.

She loved him then, as horrified as she was to admit it, almost as surely as she loves him now.

"I think this is the closest thing to Christmas magic I could have hoped for," she confesses, the smile on her lips shy, because she's certainly not one for sappiness, but they aren't just silly words to Castle.

The way he looks at her, with such awe and adoration, the way he's always looked at her, is everything. Everything she wants, everything her mother would want for her, and she vows in that moment that she wants to try harder for him, for both of them. Her mother needs justice and Kate _will_ find it, but not at the risk of losing this.

"I know I'm already scheduled to work, but next Christmas I'll find a way to compromise," she murmurs, curling her hand at his knee and squeezing.

"Or we can just do this again," he shrugs, as if it's all so easy. She's never associated relationships with a sense of ease, has never had to _not_ work so hard just to feel remotely happy with the other person. Even amidst the onslaught of her PTSD, the gut-wrenching memories Christmas tends to drown her in, she doesn't have to try to be happy, not with him. "It can be our tradition."

Her heart clenches.

"I haven't thought about traditions since Dad and I quit ours," she admits, something he already knows. "It'd be… nice to have some again."

That lopsided smile returns, beaming back at her bright enough to light the sky.

"We can have as many as you want," he murmurs, covering the hand at his knee. "And we can include your dad too."

"I'd like that," she hums, hiding the curl of her lips against his shoulder. "Traditions for us, our family. More possibilities for magic."

"Kate, you are my magic," he murmurs and she almost scoffs at him, but his voice is serious. He means every word. "I know I'm the guy who believes in aliens, Bigfoot, ghosts, all the myths and mysteries that make for the best stories, but I never believed in love at first sight. Not anymore. But then I met you a few months ago on the beach just a few miles from here-"

"And stalked me until I gave in," she adds, but her heart is skipping beats, no longer matching the timed crash of waves to shore.

"Hush," he grumbles, tightening the arm around her and she grins, nestles a little deeper into his side. "I've never wanted someone so much. Not like that, in a way that felt like it could last."

She shifts in his arms, her heart in her throat.

"I still don't know how," she admits. It'll never make sense to her, how he knew so fast, how he could fall for someone he never met, who scowled at him on a beach and essentially told him to get lost. She felt the sparks of course, the second she shook his hand, but she refused to love him until the feeling itself overwhelmed her, forced her to let it roam and thrive through her system.

Rick shrugs. "Neither do I. But you were everything I didn't know I was looking for and falling in love with you, that's been the true magic for me, Kate. The most magical thing I ever experienced, second only to holding my little girl for the first time."

She cranes her neck, brushes a kiss to his mouth before he makes her cry, and cradles his cheek in her palm. "It's mutual."

He's her magic, but he's more than that.

" _Tu esti casa mea_ ," she adds in a whisper, feeling his brow scrunch against hers, already doing his best to decipher the phrase.

"Tu and esti means _you're_ ," he mumbles, rolling the foreign words around on his tongue, picking through the studied phrases he's memorized from countless lessons. "Casa is - that has to be home, right?"

Kate hums her praise, strokes her thumb along the bone of his cheek. "Yeah. You're my home, Castle."

That crooked smile returns, grows.

"It's mutual," he echoes, burying his fingers in her hair and tilting his head to graze his lips over hers once more, earning the flutter of her lashes and the sigh of contentment into his mouth, the drift of her body. "Kate," he breathes when she slips so effortlessly into his lap. "Let me take you inside, where it's warm-"

She shakes her head, cups his jaw and kisses him until he's letting her ease them onto the blanket at his back.

"I'm plenty warm here, Castle," she mumbles, her lips spilling into a smile against his as her heart finds its rhythm, wild and free and unstoppable. Indomitable when she's with him. "Stay under the stars with me."

* * *

 **A/N: I apologize if any of the Romanian was incorrect. Google was my translator for this one.**


	12. Believing Is Seeing

_Chapter 12: Believing Is Seeing_

 _Years after an accident leaves him permanently blind, Rick Castle meets Kate Beckett in a coffee shop._

* * *

"I want her to be the first thing I see."

He listens to Alexis sigh, soft and understanding like always, before she skims a fingertip to the bandaging that's been encompassing his eyes for the past week. The doctor promised he could take it off before the wedding, that if the surgery was in fact successful, he would be okay while exposed to soft lighting, including the dying light of a sunset.

Which, according to his daughter and 'best man', is only a few minutes away.

He may finally see his family again, the world around him, his own reflection. He may finally see Kate.

"She will be," Alexis promises, patting his cheek while he sits on the edge of the guest bed in his tux. "I'll lead you to the dais set up in the backyard and then, right before Kate steps out onto the aisle, I'll take the bandaging off."

He nods at the brief run through of a long thought out plan. His surgery was two weeks ago, just shy of the wedding he's been counting down the days to and they've been conveniently staying in the Hamptons for his recovery ever since. Kate has been on edge since the moment he decided to go through with the risky treatment, skeptical of the new technology being used, the consistent but small pool of successful recipients. But she knew from the second Doctor Milton, his long time optometrist, referred him to the procedure that he would jump on it.

Anything for a chance to see again, to finally have the chance to see her.

She's done her best to keep his expectations in check, promising him that no matter the outcome, nothing changes between them.

"I'll always love you, Rick," she murmured to him the night before the surgery, staying up late into the early morning hours with him, the anxiety in her voice clashing with her reassurances, but not rivaling them. She was uncertain of the surgery, but there was no doubt in how she felt about him. She dusted her lips to his blind eyes, kissing his lids, brushing the tips of her fingers to his brow. "Whether you see again or not, you're what I want. That's never going to change."

He drew her body in close, mapped out every inch of her in the darkness for what might be the last time. If he's able to see when the bandages come off today, he's going to love her with eyes wide open on their wedding night.

"Just remember what the doctor said," Alexis chides, moving around in the downstairs guest room where he dressed in his tux, fixed his hair with practiced ease. "Open your eyes slowly after the padding is off. If the surgery was successful, everything will be blurry for a while, but up close, you should be able to see Kate without too much trouble."

Hell, he'll take blurry over total darkness any day.

"I'm excited to see you again too, Pumpkin," he murmurs, reaching out to touch her arm. She slows to a stop, cradling his hand between both of hers. He hasn't seen his daughter since she was a teenager and she's continuously assured him that she hasn't changed much, just a little taller while her hair is shorter, chopped off to sit at her shoulders now. But he can hear in her voice how much she has grown in the past eight years since the accident, the bank explosion that stole his sight. His daughter is a college graduate, starting medical school in the fall, continuing in her mission to become an opthamologist, to treat cases like his one day. Provide others with the miracle of returned sight.

"Dad," Alexis chuckles, squeezing his fingers between hers. "Don't worry, I know you want to see me and Gram, but Kate… I know it's different, I know this could be the first time. Are you nervous?"

Rick sucks in a breath. "Yeah, a little," he confesses. "I've never cared what Kate looks like, you know I stopped caring about looks a long time ago, but the idea of finally seeing her... it's just a lot. Overwhelming."

Alexis lets go of his hand, but he can feel her smiling.

"Just know you won't be disappointed."

 _She's seriously pretty,_ Alexis told him three years ago, after his first date with Kate in the form of a family dinner. _Like, model pretty._

He already knew somehow, guessed that she was gorgeous. Having his daughter reveal the tidbit about her appearance was only confirmation, leaving him to wonder and agonize over what a woman like her could want with a man like him.

Everything, she showed him. Prior to meeting Kate Beckett, he was becoming complacent in discontentment, no longer writing, stuck in a shallow end of self-pity. Kate forced him to stop feeling sorry for himself, led him back into life, reminding him that there was far more to seeing in the world to experience.

She wanted everything with him and he gave it all, took in return.

"I could never be disappointed," he murmurs, his lips quirking.

Just then the door swings open, the click of nails on hardwood clattering through the bedroom's entryway, and Castle grins as Benny rushes up to meet him.

"Incoming," the voice of his mother warns from the door Benny must have dragged her through. The dog knew better than to go find Kate upstairs and since the surgery, Benny has been glued to his side, more protective than ever.

"Hey buddy," he chuckles, reaching for the dog that scrambles between his knees, tail batting hard against his shins. Rick smoothes his hands over the black lab's head, hearing him pant in approval. He can smell the salt from the ocean clinging to Benny's fur and feels something satin wrapped around the dog's neck as he scales his hands lower. "Is he wearing a bowtie?"

"He's the ring bearer," Alexis points out. "He has to dress for the occasion, right, Benny? Besides, he loves dressing up."

"Your collection of Christmas sweaters does kind of attest to that," he mumbles to the dog, smirking as Benny nuzzles his hand. "You're sure he can carry the rings?"

"What do you think I was out there on that freezing beach with him for?" Martha huffs, her voice growing closer with the approaching sound of her footsteps. "We practiced for half an hour. The pooch is golden."

"Good boy, Benny. Kate's going to be so proud," he praises, scratching behind the dog's ears.

"Don't act as if you won't be too," Martha teases, coming up beside him. "You look absolutely dashing, Richard. Katherine is going to swoon the moment she lays eyes on you."

Castle's ears go warm, his lips twitching. He shouldn't, shouldn't hope for it so damn much, but he hopes he's able to swoon when he sees her too.

"Thanks, Mother."

"Speaking of, it's almost time, kiddo," Martha reminds them, draping her hand at his shoulder with an excited squeeze. "Are you ready?"

He closes his eyes beneath the bandaging and sucks in a silent breath through his nose. His heart thumps with anticipation, hopeful to regain his eyesight, but eager for more than that.

Blind or not, he's about to marry Kate Beckett.

Castle stands from the edge of the bed.

"More than ever."

* * *

Kate stands in front of the mirror in the master bedroom, trailing fingertips over the detailing of her mother's dress, tracing the gorgeous lace of flowers across her clavicle. Sleeves were sewn on as soon as they decided to hold the wedding in December, the soft embroidery continuing naturally down her arms, thin but enough to keep her relatively warm in the winter air.

They won't be outside for long, the ceremony likely to be brief, but their few guests will be kept warm with thick throw blankets Lanie helped her pick out. She initially suggested a wedding in the fall, but Rick is a romantic, coaxing her into the idea of marrying on the day they met in December. He insisted that he doesn't mind the cold, charmed her with the magic of a winter wedding, but the weather has been the least of her concerns, the last thing she's thinking about right now.

"Kate."

She jerks at the whisper of his voice, her eyes flickering to the reflection of the bedroom door in the mirror, just in time to see him sneaking inside.

"Castle," she hisses, catching his smirk in the glass. He still wears the thin gauze of bandages over his eyes, the state of his vision not yet known, probably won't be until sometime next week during his checkup with Milton, but Alexis promised her she would replace the patches with less prominent protection for the wedding.

"I want a pair of those laser goggles so I can look like Cyclops from the X-Men," he requested, earning a simultaneous eye roll from both daughter and fiancée.

Castle walks slow but sure footed through the room, the path memorized, and the sound of her voice like a trail of breadcrumbs. She's been to his gorgeous Hamptons mansion a few times in the past three years, the beach house almost becoming a second home for them both. Enough so that he knows his way around most of the rooms without help, without Benny or his cane to guide him.

"What are you doing up here?" she sighs, turning from the mirror as he grows closer, bracing him with her hands at his hips once he reaches her.

"Can't stay long," he murmurs, lifting his hands to her face, fingertips grazing her cheeks. Her eyes flutter shut beneath his familiar ministrations. "I know the wedding's about to start and Alexis will come looking for me any minute now, but I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Her lips quirk beneath his thumbs and she raises one of her hands to cradle the back of his, hold him there as she tilts her chin to graze a kiss to his palm. Not having her mother or her father here on her wedding day has been a persistent pang in her chest throughout the last few weeks. She's wearing her mom's dress, something Johanna would have been so proud to see, but she slipped into the gown on her own, curled her hair and arranged it into a delicate bun at her nape without help. Lanie is a wonderful friend, has been at her side since this morning, and Martha has been an amazing mother-in-law to be, passing down a stunning pair of blue earrings for Kate to wear, but the ache of something missing, two someones, never necessarily dissipates.

The two women brought smiles to her lips, but they weren't her mother. Just like Esposito, the fellow detective she loves like a brother who will be walking her down the aisle in a few minutes, isn't her father. Both roles replaced by family she never knew she needed, soothing the hollow cavern inside her chest, stopping it from gaping.

"I'm okay," she promises, whispering the words along the heartlines of his hand. "Too excited to marry you to feel sad."

Castle leans into her, brushing a kiss to her forehead.

"I bet you look so beautiful right now," he murmurs, evoking a true smile across her lips. She lifts her chin to touch it to his cheek, pressing her joy into his skin.

"Not telling you how I look, not letting you figure it out either," she chastises, catching his hand before it can skim downwards to study the design of her dress. "Not until we're out there crying over vows and saying 'I do'."

"You plan to cry for me, Beckett?" he teases, taking a step back when she doesn't relent, refuses to let his hand wander.

She hums, her fingers rising to trace along the edge of bandaging at his eyes. "Probably. Can you cry under those?"

"Haven't tried," he answers with a shrug.

"Your eyes are okay? No pain, right?" she asks, sighing as his thumb stretches to follow the line of her brow, smoothing away the concern that furrows there.

"I feel better than ever, Kate. Promise," he murmurs, skating his thumb down her socket to rest on her cheek once more, using his other hand to draw hers to his lips. He presses a kiss to her knuckles, soft and solidifying. "Ready to marry you."

"Then get out of here and go wait for me," she prompts, swaying forward to dust her lips to his cheek despite her words, a breath away from the corner of his mouth. "I'll meet you out there, Rick."

* * *

Alexis guides him out of the beach house, through the backyard that she describes along the way.

"There are birch trees placed throughout the lawn and they've got those golden twinkle lights twined around them," she murmurs, leading him down a straight path that he assumes is the same aisle Kate will walk. "They're laced through the archway over the dais too. Kate's bouquet is white roses with sprigs of lavender, so there are a few matching bouquets tied to chairs, petals all across the grass. It's simple, pretty."

"What's the sky look like?" Castle murmurs as they approach the steps of the small platform where he'll stand with his daughter at his back, an officiant at his side, and Kate in front of him.

"It's perfect, Dad," Alexis whispers, the awe subtle but alive in her voice. "It's cloudy, but the sky itself is pink and purple, a few faded streaks of sunlight. Gorgeous and gentle."

"Perfect," he echoes, picturing it all too clearly, not missing the insinuation of that last adjective.

 _Gentle on your eyes if they're able to see._

Alexis holds to his arm while they climb the three short steps to reach the dais. She shuffles him over to his supposed spot, cementing him there with the touch of her hands to his shoulders.

"As soon as she steps out," his daughter confirms one last time with a fleeting graze of her fingers to the bandaging. It's loose at his sockets now, the taped edges barely hanging on, ready to come off.

His heart begins to pound.

"Gram is in the front row," Alexis continues her description of the scene from his side, Lanie is sitting next to her, there's an empty seat for Javier, and then Kevin and Jenny complete the row."

"The two seats for Kate's parents?" he inquires, hearing Alexis's hum of assent over the calming crash of waves in the near distance.

"Opposite side of the aisle. Gram found these lanterns in a boutique when we went to town yesterday, they have candles inside the glass that you're able to light," Alexis explains. "We bought a couple, stands too, and hung them on either side of the chairs. Think Kate will like it?"

Oh, he thinks she'll love it, even if it makes her cry.

"I know she will, Pumpkin. Remind me later to thank both you and Gram again later for being so thoughtful," he murmurs with a soft curve of his mouth.

But then their small crowd is murmuring, Rick's ears catching on the keywords whispered between their family and friends, leaving Alexis's lips at the same time.

"There she is."

His daughter's fingers ease beneath the loosened bandaging, deftly removing it from each eye while everyone's attention is elsewhere.

"Okay," she whispers, squeezing his shoulder once before taking a step back.

He feels like he may pass out, his chest fluttering too fast and the lids of his eyes heavy with lack of use. But this is the moment he's been waiting for, mere seconds away from knowing if he'll be able to witness the woman walking down the aisle to be his wife. He can't miss it, can't waste any more time not seeing her.

He opens his eyes.

* * *

Benny trots along in front of her, dutifully carrying the small basket that holds the wedding rings in his mouth, his tail wagging as he approaches Castle on the dais.

Kate grins after the dog, following in his footsteps with Esposito at her side, keeping her steady with his arm beneath her hand and his head held high. She was able to see the backyard from their bedroom window, admired the lovely setup from above. It's simple, beautiful, just like she wanted, but none of it compares to the sight of Castle standing on the white platform in a tux, the palette of pinks and clouds of purple framing his figure, their dog descending loyally to sit at his feet, and the wedding officiant waiting with a patient smile.

Alexis must have helped him remove the eyepatches he was wearing because his sockets are bare of the white gauze, his eyes fluttering while he waits, listens for her approach. She trusts Alexis with Rick's health, the opthamologist in training well-versed in precaution; she must have deemed it safe enough for him to be without the added protection in the faded light of the sunset, probably even checked with the surgeon just to be certain.

She's glad for it, glad she's able to clearly see the face of the man she fell in love with, no bandaging blocking his features. Those gorgeous eyes she loves whether they can see her or not.

"Never seen you smile so big, Beckett," Espo teases at her side, but she doesn't have to look to hear his own smile in his voice. Happy for her.

"Never thought I'd be smiling this big," she admits on a breath. She never thought she'd be smiling so much, period. Not after her mom was murdered, after her dad drank himself to death, but then she met Richard Castle.

"You deserve it, boss," Esposito whispers as they reach the dais.

"Thanks, Espo," she murmurs once he stops to let her mount the steps herself, leaving her with a quick peck to her cheek. But she can't tear her eyes away from Castle, finally eliminating the last few paces of distance between them and ascending to stand on the platform with him.

She hands her bouquet to Alexis, catching his daughter's excited grin, and sucks in a deep breath in an attempt to calm the wild cadence of her heart. But Castle is staring back at her with wide eyes, shockingly clear, a vibrant blue.

"Rick?" she whispers, concern immediately ziplining through her sternum, but he's shaking his head, lifting his hand to her cheek. He doesn't seek her expression through touch, though, his fingers motionless and content along her cheekbone while his eyes explore instead.

He's never looked at her like this, has never been able to make direct eye contact or trail his gaze along her features, as if… as if he can really see her.

"You're just so beautiful," he breathes, his eyes roaming every inch of her face, glittering with the swell of moisture in his gaze. "So beautiful, Kate. Nothing I tried to come up with - nothing compared to how stunning you actually are."

Her heart stops. It's - but they told her the results of the surgery wouldn't be determined until next week, until after they returned from the honeymoon, he and Alexis-

Kate glances to his daughter, watching the two of them with a hand covering her mouth, but the apples of her cheek are rising with a smile that has to be hiding beneath her palm. She knew.

Castle can see her.

* * *

He can't stop staring at her, soaking in every detail he can manage to absorb. The flawless bone structure he's felt beneath his fingertips every day for the past three years, the olive skin and soft brown hair with streaks of honey like gold, the tender pink of lips he's kissed too many times to count.

"You're perfect," he whispers, all he can manage, because she's just… god, she's breathtaking.

He always imagined Kate was stunning, never doubted it once, but nothing his mind conjured up came close to this, to the real thing. The woman he loves is utterly striking, her face as beautiful as her heart, her body like her soul. Better than he imagined, better than he deserves.

"You can-" Her lips part and he watches her eyes - those gorgeous eyes that he tried to fathom the color of for years now - pop and burst with gold flecks of realization. The shock illuminates the shade of amber, the swirls of greens. Kaleidescope eyes. "You can see me?"

His fingers dust at her cheek, his thumb skimming along the delicate skin just below her eye. She has a beauty mark there, he notes now, hiding beneath her lashes. Just one of many tiny details he never would have found with the trace of his fingertips alone.

The moment he opened his eyes mere minutes ago, he was greeted by long seconds of fuzzy darkness, hardly an improvement from what he was used to. He was prepared to suck it up on the spot, resign himself to the world of blindness he's learned to live with, but then the darkness began to clear. Blurs of color blended through his vision, the streaks of sunset in the sky that Alexis described, the blanket of green grass, the hulking black spot of their dog at his feet. The approaching figure in white.

It took a few blinks, a couple of deep breaths to stop the vertigo, but by the time Kate climbed the steps to the dais, took her place in front of him, he was able to see her with striking clarity. The first thing he's seen in eight years.

The rest of the world is still encased in a fog, an abstract mosaic of shapes and colors all around them, but with Kate so close, standing right in front of him, he can see her perfectly.

God, he can't believe he can see her.

He nods, his throat thick with tears, with relief and joy and everything in between. But Kate is surging up into him, siphoning it all from his lips with the seal of hers. He almost forgets all about the wedding, about how they were supposed to wait for this part, but tears are catching on the fingers he uses to cradle her cheeks, her breath short and causing their kiss to fall apart against his lips.

"The surgery worked," she whispers the realization, a whimper threading through her words.

Kate eases a hand between them, dusts the tips of her fingers along one of his eyes, in awe of the change, of him.

"I wanted you to be the first thing," he rasps, snagging her fingers to draw them to his lips, pressing a kiss to each one. "I wanted you to be the first thing I saw again."

"Rick," she chokes, her lips finally spreading into a smile. The most beautiful smile, wow.

She wraps her arms around his neck, fingers submerging in his hair and her chest rising to meet his as she hugs him tightly, fits another kiss to his mouth that has his eyes threatening to fall closed. He can hear his mother weeping, Alexis sniffling at his back, and he knows he's put a big pause on the ceremony, stolen the moment with his resurrected vision, but Kate's lips are smiling beneath his, her joy an overwhelming thing that spreads through them both. He would crash a million weddings, including his own all over again, to feel her happiness so bright and strong, to see it.

Rick brushes his hands down her back, his fingers skating over the delicate embroidery of her mother's dress, and drops his forehead to rest against hers. Her lashes rise, revealing the gold of her gaze once more, and he swears he falls in love with her all over again.

"Hi," he murmurs, watching her lips quirk. He has so much to study, so much to learn, details of her to memorize, but for now, he expels a soft breath, lets his heart swell with her smile.

"Hey," she whispers, stroking her fingers down his cheek. "Wedding's going great so far."

A laugh slips from his mouth. "Kinda crashed it."

Kate shakes her head, the gorgeous line of her throat working with a swallow. "Made it better. You can see, it's - best wedding gift I could want for us, Rick."

He raises his hand to the familiar home of her cheek, but she's curling her fingers at his wrist, kissing his palm - she does that all the time and he always tried to picture the press of her lips to his hand, the cradle of her cheek in his palm, and now, actually being able to see it is so… surreal.

"Alexis. You need to see Alexis, and your mom, and this place," she breathes, drawing back just enough to reach beside him. He tears his eyes away from her, breath snagging in his lungs as Alexis comes into view. Oh, his beautiful baby bird, the girl he remembers as a teenager, is a young adult.

"Told you," Alexis chuckles, watery and soft, and he reluctantly releases Kate so he can drag his daughter into a fierce embrace.

"You're so grown up," he rasps, cradling the back of her head in his palm. He pulls back to cup her face, assess all of the subtle changes his daughter has grown into. Her features matured, her hair shorter, her eyes alight. "But still my little girl."

"Of course," she whispers, the tears beginning to dry in favor of a smile. "Always will be."

His heart threatens to explode, so thoroughly overwhelmed by his daughter, by Kate, by everything and everyone else he has yet to see. But no, no more, enough for now. His wedding, _their_ wedding-

"No pain?" Alexis asks, staring into his eyes with a critical gaze.

"No, no," he assures her, assures them both as he lowers one arm from around Alexis to reach for Kate at his side. "It's just like the doctor explained. Blurry, but I can see up close. And I know we have to call to update him, but - would it be okay if we finished getting married now?"

Alexis grins and one of the boys, Esposito, he thinks, chuckles from the crowd, the sound weaker than he's used to, a little watery. Castle attempts to steal a glimpse of them, of his mother, Lanie and Jenny. But his vision only stretches a few feet out in front of him, everything else still hazy.

"Castle, are you sure you don't want to postpone this for a bit?" Kate murmurs, brushing her knuckles to his bicep.

His gaze swivels back to her. "No, this is - I'm able to see you, see my daughter again, our family. I get to see you in your wedding dress," he breathes, coasting his hand along the side of her bodice.

He accepted a long time ago, when he felt the certainty that he was going to marry Kate Beckett one day, not long after he fell in love with her, that he would never get to see it. That, like with everything else in his life, no matter how important, how worthy the view, he would have to appreciate the experience, her, in other ways - the sound of her laugh, the smell of her hair, the sensation of her smile against his. It was a lovely idea to imagine, the possibility of Kate in a white dress, but he never actually believed he would have the privilege to see it with his own eyes. He won't waste it now.

"I don't want to wait another second, Kate."

He watches her steal a glance at the officiant, the kind man they met with a few weeks ago to discuss the ceremony, waiting in a black pea coat and white scarf, lips in a small curve.

"Whenever you're ready," he offers and Castle takes her hand.

"Never been more ready," he murmurs, squeezing her slim fingers, stroking his thumb to the engagement ring on her fourth.

His surgeon, Malone, told him that the first thing patients tend to notice, to fully appreciate, during those first glimpses of renewed sight are little things like leaves on trees, the details of clothing, the play of light from the sun, but for Castle, he will always look back on this moment and think about how the first thing he fell in immediate awe of with his returned vision is the way Kate looks so openly in love with him.

"Yeah," she whispers, twining her fingers through his. "More than ready to marry you, Castle."

Alexis squeezes both their shoulders and takes a step back, resuming her position alongside Castle and holding Kate's bouquet. The dog nudges at their knees and Castle glances down with a gasp.

"Look at you," he chuckles, reaching down to scratch Benny's head. The black lab remains obedient in his sitting position, but his tail is moving a mile a minute. The small basket holding the wedding rings is still in his mouth, bobbing with the movement. "Not a puppy at all, huh?"

Castle eases the basket from his teeth, extracting the two rings from atop the pillow inside, and sets it down at their feet.

"Good boy, Benny," he murmurs, stroking the dog's fur and adjusting his bowtie before rising with the rings. Benny's mouth falls open, pink tongue hanging out, wearing a smile of his own.

"Always a good boy," Kate confirms, the sound of her voice encouraging Benny to shuffle close, nudge his muzzle to her calf. She grins, scratches behind his ears before Castle shifts to stand in front of her once more, still holding tight to her left hand.

He lets her have the wedding band he'll wear while he carries hers in his palm, lifts it between his fingers to slide onto hers. The officiant gives him a nod and Castle swallows, meets Kate's eyes staring back at him. The woman who inspired him to create a whole new series of novels when he'd given up on ever writing again, the woman who made him believe in love at first sight without ever having to open his eyes.

"Kate," he murmurs, her breathless on his lips, calming the raging storm of his heartbeat. He's memorized his vows, but no words, not even his, will ever be enough for her. "The moment I met you, my life became extraordinary."

* * *

Their guests have all migrated inside, the dropping temperatures of nightfall making the reception in a Hamptons mansion all the more appealing, but Castle asks if they can stay outside a little longer. They're still blurry for him, but he wants to see the stars, witness the shift from day to night.

Kate doesn't mind, the two of them standing together on the platform where they said vows and 'I do's, her head on his shoulder and his arms around her keeping her warm.

"We can go inside if you want to," he murmurs, turning away from the night sky to stare at her. Never just a glance or a quick look. When his eyes fall on her, they remain.

"Get used to the creepy staring," he smirked while they were dancing for the first time as husband and wife, swaying to the music playing from his iPhone despite the DJ Alexis hired. That dance, their song, was reserved for them and them alone.

"Already am, you always managed a creepy stare whether you could see or not," she teased, but she arched on her toes to brush the curve of her lips to his cheek anyway, even though he didn't need it now, even though he could now witness her smiling without having to feel it for confirmation.

Kate cranes her neck, feels his smile bloom under the caress of her lips.

"I'm good here," she assures him, resting her head at his jaw.

"Christmas is going to feel really underwhelming after this," he muses, his gaze following the trickle of her fingers along his wrist, the special watch he still wears, probably no longer needs- "Keeping it."

She rolls her eyes, but he steals her hand, draws it to his lips, grazing a kiss along her knuckles.

"It's my favorite Christmas present ever and I still read Braille."

"Mm," she agrees, dragging their hands down to lie against his chest.

"What do you want for Christmas this year?" he asks, curious like a little boy. "I want to get you something amazing so I can actually see your face when you open it, see your reaction. I can't wait to see your reactions to everything we experience."

"I don't want anything," she chuckles, brushing her thumb over the smooth gold of his wedding band. "I have everything. You just became my husband and you have what you wanted most. You're happy and that's all I want."

"What I want most… are you talking about my sight or you?" he asks, quirking his brow. "Because I'd choose you any day."

"Rick," she scolds, but he shakes his head, shifts to lace his arms around her waist and draw her into the cove of his body. She sinks into his embrace, revels in the solid wall of him against her, the warmth of him all around her. It could start snowing and she still wouldn't be cold, not like this.

"No, I'm serious. If there had to be a choice, if the surgery would have been too risky, if I would have had to risk losing you or our family in any way, it wouldn't have been worth it," he explains, his hands squeezing her hips through the gown before spanning the flare of her back. "I knew I might have the chance to see today, but I'd give it up all again just for this, Kate. Just to be here with you."

Kate takes advantages of the extra height her heels allow her, simply having to lean in, steady herself with her hands at his chest, to kiss him. Long, thorough, and unhurried as he curves his palm at her nape, lets the other rest upon her jaw, fingertips skimming her pulse.

"I love you," she whispers, feeling it like fire in her chest. The way she loves him can be overwhelming, but she relishes the burn.

Castle dusts another kiss to her mouth before his forehead is sealing against hers. "I love you too. Because you're what makes me happy."

She sighs, nudges her nose to his, and tries to breathe. He's going to make her cry all over again, just like he did with the vows that wrapped around her heart like the warm embrace he has her in now.

 _You are the joy in my heart. You're the last person I want to see when I close my eyes, the person I want to feel beside me whether it be in darkness or in light._

"Even if I wake up tomorrow and it's all black again, I'll still be so happy, Kate. More grateful than I've ever been." Her lashes flutter, eyes open and lips parting to tell him to stop, to not even fathom the possibility of losing his reclaimed ability to see, but he isn't done, always has more to say. "Because I know what your smile looks like, how your eyes change colors, how beautiful you are in your mom's dress." He brushes one of the curls cascading along her cheek to sit behind her ear, the tips of his fingers grazing her temple, the slash of her cheek, with the same reverence she fell in love with three years ago. "I don't need to see the world, to see anything else. I got to see you."

Kate cradles his face in her hands like she's done a million times before and strokes her thumbs along his cheekbones. His eyes soften, cerulean and staring back at her, the way they always have when he's looking at her, even when he couldn't see. He may finally have the ability to examine her face with more than touch, to absorb the world around them with his eyes, to experience its beauty, but between them, nothing's changed.

"You always have, Castle."


End file.
